


Triage [OLD]

by aeraecura



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: ...possibly, Angst and Humor, F/F, Gen, I'm not sure if this will end up qualifying as Alphyne or not but I guess we'll see, If I call this character-driven will that excuse the fact that like nothing happens, Just asking that for a friend y'see, Medical Experimentation, Minor Original Character(s), Post-Undertale Neutral Route - Near Genocide Ending, because Undertale, hey remember when I said this was angst and humor well I lied it's total angst, kind of, sort of, the friendly fanfic where everybody gets precisely what they wanted, the mildest of body horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 19:04:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 53,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10950819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeraecura/pseuds/aeraecura
Summary: [Author note: I'm revamping this story, so please go to my author page to read the new version instead! Or don't, I can't really tell you how to live your life.]ENTRY NUMBER 12:* Determination—the will to live in the face of certain death.* Although it makes human SOULs powerful, monsters cannot tolerate it for long.* I’m not powerful.* I’m not going to be a very good queen.* But maybe my determination is enough to save someone else.





	1. This Burning Feeling

ENTRY NUMBER 01:  
* I thought it would help if Sans called them.  
* Being able to say what I feel, even if it’s too late to change anything…  
* Maybe I could get it all off my chest that way, you know?  
* But... it didn’t help.  
* I’ve done too many things wrong.

* * *

 

The lights overhead buzzed and flickered as Alphys shuffled into the room. Spots of bright green wavered across the ceiling, reflected by the water in the tank. There was something wrong with the electrical wiring down here, but Alphys had never gotten around to fixing it while she’d been the royal scientist. Now that she was the queen, dealing with outdated lighting in a lab nobody else used wasn’t exactly a top priority.

  
This specific exam room had originally been set up with her aquatic patients in mind, but after her experiments ended the way that they did, both the room and the tank which dominated almost half of its floorspace sat unused. Or they did, until recently.

  
“H-hi, Undyne.” Alphys crouched in front of the tank and peered in, both hands resting against the thick glass. The creature inside cracked open its good eye, noted her existence, and turned away. With a swish of its tail, it slid though the water towards the opposite corner of the tank and curled up, glowing spines bristling out from its sides. From this new vantage point it stared back at Alphys, pale body illuminated blue where it was shaded from the overhead lights and sickly green where it wasn’t.

  
“Okay,” Alphys said as she sat back on her haunches. The tank’s filter hummed as it worked; the water gurgled, and the ceiling lights went on buzzing. Her hands slid down along the glass to dangle limply at her sides. “Th-that’s okay.”

  
She stood and motioned to brush off her robe. Then found herself gripping the heavy fabric instead. She forced her fingers to loosen back up and went to get the clipboard from where it sat on the countertop. There was a low burble, muffled by water and vocal cords no longer suited for coherent speech. Alphys drew in a deep breath, released it, and looked up from the medical chart. Reading it was just a habit by this point, anyway. She’d written out the chart herself, and while she’d made no conscious effort to memorize its contents, years of anime fandom had left Alphys with a knack for absorbing detailed information without much effort. And this was much more important than remembering dialogue trees in _Mew Mew Kissy Cutie._

  
Alphys made a valiant and mostly-unsuccessful attempt at sounding cheerful. “Um. Are you hungry?”

The Amalgamate had pressed itself against the glass as far from Alphys as possible, which couldn’t be comfortable with spikes protruding out from what had been its ribcage. It glared at Alphys from behind a crossed limb that, to a kindly or maybe just half-blind viewpoint, might pass for an arm. Despite everything the face was remarkably similar to what it had once been, in its expressions if not its precise form. There was a reason Alphys liked having something to look at that wouldn’t stare back at her.

  
She set the clipboard back down and approached the tank, hands clasped behind her back. It was a nervous habit, one of any, but at least this looked a little more dignified than hunching down and wringing her hands. Asgore had never fidgeted like that. Monarchs didn’t feel anxious or useless, and if they did then they weren’t supposed to show it.

  
“You really need to eat, you know. I d-don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to, b-but if y-you don’t, then— _EEK!”_

  
The Amalgamate shot forward and slammed into the glass, sending water sloshing out through the top and across the floor. Alphys let out a distinctly un-queenly yelp and flinched as the Amalgamate clawed and pounded at the side of its tank, until its limbs began to deform like soggy clay against the unforgiving surface.

  
“Undyne, p-please!! You’re going to hurt yourself..!”

  
The sounds that came next were too garbled to identify, all growls and furious gurgling as water churned and lapped against the tank’s interior.

  
But if she had to take a guess, she thought it might have been trying to say _”OUT.”_

 

* * *

 ENTRY NUMBER 12:  
* Determination—the will to live in the face of certain death.  
* Although it makes human SOULs powerful, monsters cannot tolerate it for long.  
* I’m not powerful.  
* I’m not going to be a very good queen.  
* But maybe my determination is enough to save someone else.

* * *

 

Upon re-emerging from the True Lab, Alphys realized to her mild dismay that the hem of her robe was soaking wet, thanks to the incident next to the Amalgamate’s tank. She did her best to mop it up with a few fistfuls of crumpled paper napkins lying around under her old computer desk, but the bottom of her skirt was now stained light grayish and not likely to improve without proper cleaning. And by the time she realized _that_ , it also occurred to her that to get home on time, she would’ve had to leave about five minutes ago. Crap.

  
The damp fabric of her robe clung to her ankles as she scurried out of the lab. Maybe a warm-blooded monster might have found it sort of pleasant, given the climate, but she was a reptile and _liked_ heat. At least she didn’t have to pass by anyone on the way to the elevator and worry about getting weird looks; this area had been pretty barren even before the human’s rampage.

  
In the previous months, Hotland as a whole had slowly settled back down into an uncomfortable sort of normal. Despite her efforts, this area had suffered a greater loss of life than any other in the Underground. All the surviving monsters had long since gone home, but the population just wasn’t large enough to ease the sense that this place was much, much emptier than it should have been. But at least all the dust was finally cleaned up. She’d seen to that, of course, and made sure that everyone was distributed to the right families to be... taken care of.

  
And MTT Resort was almost as populated as it had always been, even with its star no longer present.

  
“Alphys!!” “Hey giiiirl!!!”

  
Alphys nearly jumped out of her skin before she identified the flash of motion in her peripheral vision—Catty waved furiously from atop a dumpster over in the alley, while Bratty clutched onto the back of her friend’s overalls to keep her from falling and cracking her head open. Well, at least SOME things hadn’t changed. She raised her hand in a tentative little wave before pulling open the door to the Resort. A few monsters turned to glance at her, then looked away and continued walking past. The receptionist stood and filed their nails, which was sort of impressive for a being whose only hand also served as their head.

  
From there it was only a short distance to the elevator in the Core’s entrance. And then to New Home.

  
The plan was to quietly slip off to her room and change clothes, but any hope of accomplishing that was quickly dashed as she entered the castle’s living quarters. A small monster in a frilly white dress perched on the dining room table, delicate moth wings folded neatly behind its back. Sans was sitting beside it, idly tipping a half-empty teacup back and forth with one hand.

As Alphys shut the door behind her, Sans trailed off from whatever he’d been saying and raised his voice. “—see? here she is.”

She jolted with recognition as the little winged monster turned to face her, revealing the metal helmet it held on its lap. Then she belatedly remembered that there were quite a few similar-looking monsters around, and more importantly, if one ever managed to semi-miraculously return from the dead on its own power then it would probably not be a Whimsun. Or Whimsalot. Or any other variations thereof. She swallowed hard and rubbed her sweaty hands against her robe before folding them behind her back as she walked in. The armpits of her robe were uncomfortably damp too. She was a lizard, why the heck did she even have sweat glands? It was like a cruel joke. Just one of the many cruel jokes which made up Alphys’ whole life.

  
“Hello! Ahh... how are you?” Now that she’d determined its species at least, Alphys was slightly ashamed to admit that she had no idea _who_ this other monster actually was. It must have taken shelter in her lab when the human came, just like everyone else, but she had no idea what its name might be. Asgore probably could have told her. He’d known everyone.

  
Sans, taking this as his cue to leave, slid down from his chair and exited the room.

  
In turn, the little winged monster set down its helmet, stood up on the tabletop, and dropped into a curtsy. “Hello, your highness.”

  
Maybe this one hadn’t gotten the memo that Alphys didn’t want anyone to bow or call her by any titles, just as Asgore had also preferred. Alphys smiled uncomfortably and nodded at her guest, who remained standing. For some reason. She’d never seen a monster of its kind walk rather than fly, so its feet were probably clean, but still. They stared at each other for a minute, at which point Alphys realized they were waiting for her to sit down first and scuttled over to the chair Sans had just vacated. Once she’d pulled herself up onto the seat, the other monster sat down as well.

  
The interior of what had been Asgore’s home looked just as it always had, down to the (now rather wilted) golden flowers in the vase on the table. With all the other construction and rebuilding projects currently underway, focusing on revamping her new living quarters to suit her preferences just felt wrong to Alphys. It was... _basically_ livable. But the furniture had all been made with boss monsters in mind, and it was hard to look queenly with your chin three inches above the tabletop. She did her best, of course, but historically Alphys’ “best” attempts didn’t tend to go well.

  
“So, is there any reason for the visit? It’s—it’s fine if there isn’t, of course, everyone is welcome whenever they like! But, um, Sans made it seem like there was something you wanted to talk about..?”

  
The moth-like monster nodded. “I doubt that you remember me. But you brought back my sister after she Fell Down.”

  
“Oh. Th-that’s right.” Dammit. She couldn’t remember her name either! She... she was pretty sure one of the surviving Whimsum’s names had started with a C, but beyond that her mind was a complete blank. “Sh-she’s part of the bird Amalgamate. Is she doing okay?”

  
“They’re fine. However.” Now it hesitated, as if trying to steel itself. Its voice remained cool and even, though Alphys had to lean forward to hear. “My younger sibling Fell Down as well. Yesterday.”

  
Alphys sat back in her seat and lowered her head, fingers laced together on the tabletop. She knew what was coming next and had no idea how to stop it, aside from outright fleeing the room. It was a tempting thought. “...Oh.”

  
“I know what you can do. So, please... help them. They won’t be the same afterwards, I understand. It doesn’t matter. Most of my family is already gone because of the human. Apart from Reaper Bird, they’re all I have left. Help them.”

  
“I’m sorry... about your sibling. And y-your family.” Alphys looked down at her hands. “If there was anything I could do to help, I would. But it isn’t that simple. D-during the experiments that b-brought back your sister, I used a substance which derived from the human SOULs Asgore had collected. Now that the SOULs are gone, I can’t get any more. I’m really s-sorry.”

  
The Whimsun-or-Whimsalot-or-Whimsawhatever stared at her with no emotion at all. A door opened and closed on the other side of the house, and Alphys mentally screamed for Sans to come back and rescue her. Mind-reading and telepathy was the stuff of anime, of course, but monsters were literally made of magic and a lizard-girl could hope. But, no such luck. Alphys broke eye contact first, fidgeting with her hands.

  
“...And there’s nothing else you can do.”

  
“N-not... not really?” She cringed inwardly at her own tone of voice.

  
“It isn’t your fault if something goes wrong. Can't you try?”

  
Recovering a little, Alphys tried to recall the way Asgore had always spoken to her. “I told you. Th-there i-isn’t anything I can do. If... if another human were to fall into the Underground, or something like that, it might be different, but...”

  
“You were the royal scientist. There must be something else you can do.”

  
She shook her head. “Th-there... really isn’t.”

  
“Have you ever tried?” The monster (what was its name, why couldn’t she think of it?) pressed on, leaning forward to face her.

  
Alphys curled her hands into fists and tried to square her shoulders, but she was so thrown-off that her voice still came out embarrassingly shaky. “Th-there isn’t anything I can do. I’m—I’m n-not going t-to... experiment on your sibling j-j-just to see what happens, when I know it won’t help. I’m sorry. I’m r-really, really sorry. If I could change it, I would, b-but... I can’t. That’s just how it is.”

  
Its antennae twitched; otherwise the monster stayed very, very still. Then it shifted back and folded its hands in its lap. “...I see.” Quietly it stood up and retrieved its helmet. Now that Alphys looked more carefully, she noticed that it was dented along one side, as if the helmet had been crushed and the somewhat clumsily forced back into shape.

  
“I’m s-sorry,” she repeated. What else was there to say? The now-masked monster inclined its head and hopped backwards off the table, wings fluttering as it hovered in place.

  
The voice was muffled, but the sense of distance would have been audible even without words. “Thank you for your time. Your highness.” Then the Whimsalot flew over to the opened window and departed, leaving behind the faint scent of bleach and flowers in its wake.

  
Alphys pulled off her glasses and leaned her head down onto the table.

  
If someone told her six months ago that monsters would not only crown her as their queen after seeing the product of her experiments up close, but _beg_ her for a repeat performance, as Mettaton would have put it... well, firstly she’d freak out because someone knew what she’d done. But she also wouldn’t have believed a word.

  
Soft footsteps approached from the hallway. “...so. where’re we at now?”  
“Th-that was the second person. Since this morning.”

  
“nice.” A blue-and-gray blob that she could only assume was Sans peered out from the kitchen. Alphys started to reach for her glasses, decided she didn’t actually care, and dropped her hand back down. “want some sea tea? there’s still a little left over.”

  
“Okay. Th-thank you.” Alphys closed her eyes. God, she was tired, and in a way that was only _partially_ due to lack of sleep.

  
What she’d told the Whimsalot (or Whimsum or Whimsalittle or whatever else it decided to call itself) was almost true, anyway. Only a few vials of Determination were left over by the time the human had appeared, and most of it was now infused with Undyne’s body. Even if it took less Determination to revive a Fallen monster than to produce a living creature from dust, the amount which now remained probably wasn't enough to bring anybody’s sibling back. And that was assuming Undyne wouldn’t need it.

  
“here y’go.” Sans set the teacup on the table, and Alphys mumbled her thanks. Sea tea wasn’t really her favorite, but they’d run out of soda a day or two ago and until one of them bothered to do some grocery shopping, the only alternative was a box of golden flower tea Asgore had prepared a little while before his death. Which, for a variety of reasons, meant that all they had was sea tea. At least it was hot. Alphys sat back up and pressed her hands around the teacup, head tilted forward so that the steam could warm her face.

Apparently not up to the effort of climbing into a chair, Sans settled down on the floor and sat back against one of the table’s legs. Alphys grimaced. Queen or not, she didn’t want anyone to sit at her feet like a dog. Unless they were actually a dog. As some people were.

  
Condensation from the hot beverage left her face damp, and Alphys dragged the sleeve of her robe across her chin before speaking up. “Sans... what am I supposed to do? If this keeps happening, it’s only going to get worse.”

  
There was a light _clonk_ as Sans leaned his skull back against the table leg. “ya mean people falling down, or the way that conversation went?”

  
“I don’t know. Both?”

  
“well,” he began. “first one is the same old problem asgore always faced... monsters need somethin’ to give them hope. though, uh, declaring war might not go over so hot, this time around. as for the second issue... that’s somethin’ you gotta work out for yourself. unless you feel like givin’ a recap, ‘cause i wasn’t listening.”

“Not really.”

  
Since she was made queen, he’d surprised her by more or less appointing himself as her personal assistant-slash-advisor, and _shocked_ her by actually sticking with it for more than two days. Maybe he was just lonely without his brother, or maybe he was afraid that Alphys would freak out and run the Underground even further into the ground than it already was. He wasn’t any more qualified to rule than she was, but was helpful when he could be helpful. At other times... well, he was still Sans.

  
“...got somethin’ on your skirt, there.”

“What?” Alphys pushed herself back from the table and squinted downward to see what he was referring to; the front of her robe still felt a little soggy, making the gray stain along the bottom hem even more obvious. Whoops. “...Oh. I, ahhh, I was in Waterfall. I must have gotten it d-dirty.”

Nothing sketchy-sounding there, not at all.

  
“huh. so that’s where you’ve been going.”

  
There was no judgment in the comment, or relief, or much of anything at all. Alphys sipped from her teacup and slowly set it back down. She hadn’t told him anything about what she’d been doing, of course she hadn’t. Sans never asked how or where she’d been spending hours every day for the past several weeks, and she wasn’t too eager to share. Maybe someday in the future, but not yet. “Yes.”

  
“that why you haven’t been answering your phone?” Sans asked.

“...Y-yes.”

Alphys was sweating again when San finally stood up, shoving his hands back into his pockets.

“... ...welp, time to get back to not doin’ any work.” He winked and headed back in the direction of the kitchen, but paused to lay a bony hand on Alphys’ elbow, making her jump. “make sure you’re takin’ care of yourself too, ok?” She nodded, maybe just a little too quickly.

Satisfied with her response—or maybe not—Sans padded out of the room, leaving Alphys sitting and staring down into her teacup.  
And then the room was quiet again.

“Th-thanks,” she mumbled to nobody in particular, and set her head back down on the table.

 

* * *

 ENTRY NUMBER 15:  
* With too much “determination” in her system, she’ll melt away.  
* But monsters can only absorb dust if their stability is compromised.  
* My current strategy seems to be working so far...  
* But it’s not very efficient.  
* The sooner she’s strong enough to re-form on her own, the better.

* * *

 

Undyne had a very simple and VERY effective method for dealing with her problems:

  
Spears.

It wasn’t the kind of strategy that took much thought to come up with, but if she had to give an explanation it would be this: if you throw enough spears at a problem, either it gets resolved or it turns into a new problem, ideally the kind that you can suplex into submission. It was this kind of top-notch thinking that had led her to becoming the head of the royal guard, and it had never failed her yet. Even so, she had the self-confidence to recognize when her usual approach just wouldn’t do.

  
For example: Problems involving small and dangerously squish-able people who you did NOT want to hit with a spear.

  
When you grew up the way Undyne had, simply being in the royal guard wasn’t enough to break you of certain habits—hanging around in the garbage dump, for example. That was where she’d gotten her piano, and more recently it was where she met Dr. Alphys. Not that she knew who that WAS, yet. At the time she was just a little yellow reptilian monster in a muddy lab coat, perched at the edge of the abyss as water rushed past her and down into the dark. Undyne herself had looked down there a few times; once she’d gotten annoyed and thrown a broken refrigerator off the edge. There was no sound to indicate that it had ever hit bottom, or that there was anything down there TO hit. As far as she knew, that thing was still falling down, and down, and down, endlessly...

  
The memory had made her shudder for some reason, which was enough to send her striding off to go say hello before giving the idea any consideration whatsoever. Alphys had been so deep in thought that even the splash of Undyne’s rain boots through knee-deep water did nothing to alert her that someone else was nearby. Not very good warrior instincts right there, but between the lab coat and the glasses and the hunched-over posture of a monster carrying some great weight on their back, it seemed a safe guess that she wasn’t any kind of warrior.

  
And now, they were... something? “Friends” didn’t seem like quite the right word, but “acquaintances” was way more formal than Undyne liked. The point was that they’d spoken often enough that Alphys probably wouldn’t freak out if Undyne showed up at her house unannounced. Probably. Hopefully. Maybe.

  
Undyne shook her sweaty ponytail off her neck as she approached the lab. Why any reasonable monster even considered living on Hotland was totally beyond her; SHE could tough it out when she had to, of course, but the heat was oppressive, instantly drying out her scales and sensitive gills. Even in a tank-top and shorts she felt like she was baking in an oven. How could ANYONE walk in and decide that THIS was a good place to live?! ...Then again, the royal lab had been built here, so she supposed that Alphys hadn’t had much choice in the matter. The little nerd got a pass on this one for now.

  
Panting like one of her canine guards, Undyne finally reached her destination and kicked at the door. Her boot clanged against the metal, and she had just enough patience to wait until the vibrations completely subsided before trying again. CLANG. CLANG. CLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANG.

  
There was a pretty respectable dent in the making before she realized that this might be kind of rude. Once the repetitive bang of rubber against steel had faded, she could hear scuffling footsteps and piping voice from within. “J-j-just a minute!”

  
Undyne grinned to herself and rocked back on her heels, slipping a hand into the back pocket of her jeans as she waited.

  
The door slid open, and behind it Dr. Alphys peered up at her with a slightly dazed expression. Undyne hardly noticed; between her height and the muscles and scars and fangs and the yelling, staring was just sort of a fact of life. Most people didn’t blush, though. Undyne’s grin widened as she stepped into the lab. “Hey, Alphys! What’s up? Are you busy right now?”

  
The white fabric of Alphys' lab coat was crumpled and the top button was in the wrong hole, as though she’d just pulled it on a few moments ago. “Um. Hi, Undyne! I’m, ahhh, I’m n-n-not b-busy or anything.” She looked Undyne up and down from behind her oval glasses, face still reddened in what Undyne assumed to be embarrassment or shyness or whatever. “Did you... want to come in?”

  
Undyne nodded gratefully and walked a little further into the cool lab, until the door automatically slid shut behind her. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected from the royal scientist’s workplace—it had been unoccupied before Alphys was hired—but the interior still wasn’t quite what she’d expected from some kind of scientific lab. One escalator along the wall led upward to some other room while another further one led down, while between them sat a computer desk piled high with papers and empty soup bowls and a few sparse furnishings here and there. Next to the computer table was what looked like a massive TV with some kind of control system along the bottom, the screen currently displaying what looked to be some part of Snowdin town. Huh. She shook herself, remembering she’d been asked a question. “Oh right, yeah! I mean... YEAH, but I also had a favor to ask. You’re good with technology and stuff, right?”

  
Alphys glanced around her lab and made a vague, expansive gesture with her arms.

  
“Great! ‘Cause I need your help with something.” Beaming with something weirdly close to pride, Undyne thrust her hand into her pocket and withdrew a shattered slab of glass and plastic. “My phone broke.”

  
Alphys gaped at the mutilated object in her hand as if it was a baby bird Undyne had stomped on, which wasn’t so far from the truth. The stomping part, not the hurting-baby-birds part, obviously. Ngaah!!

  
“W-what HAPPENED?” The royal scientist blurted out, snatching up the dead phone. Now it was Undyne’s turn to shrug, shaking a few loose strands of hair off her forehead.

  
“Like I said, I broke my phone by accident. Sorry I didn’t give you any warning about showing up, I didn’t think of calling before I—” Wait WAIT— “...Uh, I didn’t think to borrow anyone else’s phone and call, I just came straight here. That’s okay, right?”

  
Alphys was still fixated by the damaged device, turning it over in her hand. As she did so, a fractured section of its casing broke off and dropped to the floor with a clatter. She looked stricken.

  
After a minute Alphys recovered and nodded solemnly. “Yes, it’s fine. I just... need to get some tools, I think... um, wait here for a minute?” She scurried off towards one of the escalators, then paused to look back. “If you want a soda or something, y-you can have one from the fridge.”

  
“Thanks!” Undyne waved, then grimaced as soon as Alphys had disappeared up the stairs. Ugh, soda. Soda was AWFUL. But it was true that even the short walk between the edge of Waterfall and the lab had left her parched. Undyne opened the fridge, noted the pile of instant noodle packages inside with some confusion, then grabbed a can of some lemon-lime flavored nonsense and cracked it open. She’d guzzled down about three-quarters of the syrupy drink AND finished making all manner of ugly faces at it by the time Alphys reappeared, armed with a small plastic toolbox along with the wrecked remains of the cell phone. Undyne followed her over to the table and sat on the other side, chugging down the last few mouthfuls of soda.

  
“So, what’s the prognosis? Is the patient gonna live?” Alphys scrunched up her face in the most _adorable_ way and sighed at Undyne’s question.  
“I can definitely rebuild it from scratch, but I hope you had everything backed up.”

  
Undyne stared at her blankly. Alphys opened her mouth to say something before changing her mind and simply reaching for the toolbox. “If not, um... then we’ll see. And, ahh, n-no offense but your phone is kind of old? I could upgrade it, if you want.”

  
“Hey!” Undyne hadn’t been planning on that at all; not that it made a huge difference. She had her reasons for never bothering to get a newer phone and they mostly weren’t Gold-related. “Really, you can do that?”

  
Alphys brightened a little as she flipped open the box’s lid, withdrawing a tiny screwdriver that looked as though it was intended for fixing eyeglasses or something along those lines. Undyne watched with genuine interest as Alphys prodded at the phone’s casing, swapped the screwdriver out for an even smaller one, then set about opening the phone up. “Y-yeah, easily! Just give me a minute...”

  
Once the outer plastic case was removed—what remained of it, at least—the cracked greenish circuit board and tangle of colorful wires spilled out like the guts of some weird electronic animal. Even more interesting to Undyne was the shift that Alphys seemed to undergo as she worked; despite the shakiness to her voice, her hands moved with the kind of surgical deftness that, she supposed, was totally fitting for a doctor. With the cell phone now opened up, Alphys “hmmmm”-ed at what she saw, reached for a pair of tweezers, and set about extracting a few shattered fragments of black plastic.

  
“What’s that?” Undyne asked, crunching her now-empty soda can against the tabletop. Alphys gave her a look.

  
“It’s—it WAS the battery. You’ve never opened up your phone before?” Alphys set the screwdriver down and reached for a hobby knife, flicking the blade out and using it to pry off a particularly stubborn shard of battery from the wrecked phone.

  
“Nope.”

  
“Well, you really should sometime. I used to always do it with things I found at the dump... it’s the best way to learn.” Alphys advised, then cringed as she caught herself. “B-but. Well. Y-you probably have better things to do than mess around with garbage and... and stuff... it’s j-just something dumb I did when I was younger.”

  
“Nah, it’s not dumb at all!! I mostly just hang around there looking for cool junk, anyway.” Undyne leaned forward on her elbows, attention shifting back to Alphys herself. There were darkened smudges underneath her eyes, the purplish color contrasting with the yellow scales around it. It didn’t look like Dr. Alphys had been sleeping very well lately. Undyne frowned and leaned back, draping her arms across the back of her chair. She pressed her knee against the table to tilt the chair up onto its back legs and looked around the lab once more.

  
“Hey, did Asgore give you that?” she asked, and Alphys paused to look up again.

  
“Did he give me what?”

  
Undyne nodded towards the yellow mug sitting on Alphys’ computer desk. She hadn’t paid much attention before, but saw now that it was in the shape of a yellow lizard, with a long tail curled upward to form the handle. “That.”  
“Um. Yes. Why do you ask?” Undyne slid her leg back down, letting her chair drop onto its front legs with a CLONK that made Alphys jump. Undyne smiled sheepishly.

  
“Just wondering. When I became the captain of the Royal Guard, Asgore sent me this little fish-shaped teacup as a present. At the time I thought it was kinda funny, but if he sent you a cup too... I guess it’s a normal thing he does. Pff. Old softie.”

  
“Oh. Th-that’s cool?” Alphys stammered, then made one last adjustment before retracting the blade to her hobby knife and setting it down. “Your phone is done.”

  
“WHOA, really???” Undyne made no effort to hide the wonder in her voice as she reached out for the phone. It looked nothing at all like—well, it was in one piece again, so of course it didn’t look like it had a few minutes ago—but ANYWAY it looked like a completely different phone, covered in some dark, sleek metal and a pristine screen. She’d smashed it up just as an excuse to come say hi to her timid new friend or acquaintance or whatever, she hadn’t been banking on essentially getting a brand new phone out of the deal as well. Undyne turned it on and clicked through the menu. “It still works and everything—my wallpaper’s still there. How did you do that so fast?!”

  
Alphys grinned shyly, fidgeting in place with what Undyne HOPED was pride. She’d totally earned it. “P-practice, mostly?”

  
“That’s INCREDIBLE!” Undyne stood and plucked the startled Alphys up from her chair, the smaller monster letting out an “eep!” as she found herself suddenly squished into a big scaly, muscle-y hug. “Thanks!” Alphys made a squeaky noise that was probably meant to be one of acknowledgement, and Undyne set her back down on her feet. “So, what do I owe you?”

  
“Uh—” Now her face was REALLY red for some reason. “N-nothing! I’m glad to help. But, uh, maybe... s-since you’re here, um... if you’re not busy...” Alphys laced her fingers together as Undyne looked to her with expectant curiosity. “Do you like anime?”

  
Undyne furrowed her brow. “What’s anime?” At those two words, Alphys’ eyes went huge, as though Undyne had just admitted to being kept in a closet and fed nothing but fish-flakes as a child.

  
“Y-you don’t know what anime is?”  
She’d just said so, but Undyne didn’t want to sound mean to what she judged to be a rather sensitive monster, and shook her head. Alphys’ eyes brightened with enthusiasm despite the dark circles underneath them. “Do you want to watch it with me? You might like it, it’s got magical girls and th-they’re like superheroes but they’re cute girls with magic powers and it’s kind of like a cartoon but WAY more deep and emotional so it’s not for kids or anything, a-and there’s one that’s REALLY good that’s c—”

  
Alphys’ voice stopped mid-word, the top half of her torso sliding free from the bottom and smacking wetly against the floor. The bottom half of what had been Alphys fell limply to its knees, then followed the top half and fell with a splatter. The white lab coat was now stained red and filthy gray as the body parts inside collapsed with a little puff of dust, mingling with the pool of blood slowly spreading out across the floor.

  
Undyne staggered back in stunned horror, transfixed.

  
Over the bloody mess of dust and crumpled clothing stepped a human child hardly any bigger than Alphys had been. The ballet slippers on its feet were stained from pink to dark gray, matching the dusty skirt tied around its waist. Its mouth formed a wide smile, but its eyes were dead.

  
Undyne couldn’t move, as though she’d been pinned in place by her own green magic. The child drew closer, empty smile still plastered across its face, and she could see a knife dangling from its hand—not a plastic toy but a rusted kitchen knife, sticky with blood and dust, dust, more dust. It was everywhere.

  
She couldn’t move. She couldn’t move and she still couldn’t move no matter how hard she screamed to herself, and her magic would not obey her, and then the human was in arm’s reach and she could do nothing as it raised its knife and lunged still smiling dust everywhere and its eyes were d

 

 _The Amalgamate jerked awake._  
_It forgot the details of its dream almost instantly, but the sense that something was horribly, horribly wrong still remained. Glancing from side to side, it clamped itself into a protective ball and sank down towards the bottom of its tank, fangs half-bared at nothing in particular. Its damaged gills fluttered to draw in oxygen. There was a mechanical hum coming from someplace. Burning pain radiated through the Amalgamate's body, but the cool water tickling across its physical surface was soothing. Its frantic breathing slowed._

  
_Only then, finally, did the creature’s confused mind stumble its way into something like alertness. Beyond the water, everything was a blur of greens and dark yellows and black. On reflex it swam forward, but soon bumped up against something clear and hard, separating it from the rest of its surroundings. Another shove against the glass. It didn’t budge. The Amalgamate remembered what it wanted to look for, and then forgot again._

  
_Its stomach ached, but there was nothing to be done about that. A little yellow-and-white smudge appeared sometimes with food and sometimes with needles that made the burning feeling worse, but it... she... SHE wasn’t here now. She wasn’t on the floor, dead or dying. She wasn’t here, at all, and THAT was a problem. It made a noise and pushed against the glass, swimming along its edge towards the door to see if maybe the glass stopped somewhere. When that failed, it looked up towards the water’s surface, but there was no way to reach the top without leaving the water. And that would hurt. The Amalgamate pressed against the barrier separating it from the door, but nothing happened. In desperation it tried to lash out at the glass with magic and break through, but pain seared through its head until its body wavered and it whimpered and forgot what it had been trying to do. Uncertainty gnawed at it, for reasons it couldn’t begin to understand._

  
_And its stomach still hurt._

_The Amalgamate hissed and burbled and clawed at the glass long after it had forgotten why._

_But nobody came._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The basic premise of this story has been floating around in my head for about a year, but I only just now got to writing it because life works out that way sometimes. This is also the first work of fanfiction I've ever publicly posted, so any comments/critiques/personal attacks would be greatly appreciated.


	2. Dangerous Path

ENTRY NUMBER 22:

* I didn't have a choice.  
* This was the right thing to do, and I don't regret it.  
* Besides, even if it was wrong...  
* It's too late to turn back now.  
* For better or for worse, I have to keep going.

* * *

 Alph was hiding something. That much was so abundantly obvious that it wasn't worth mentioning; the real question was  _what_  she was trying to cover up. She was the queen, after all. She could do pretty much whatever she wanted, whenever and wherever she wanted. The secondary question, by extension, was whether or not it was worth the effort to care or get involved.

San yawned and plopped down onto what he still thought of as Asgore's throne. Not that he doubted Alphys' legitimacy as a monarch or anything dramatic like that. She just never used this thing. In fact, she hadn't gone anywhere near the throne room at all since the first few days, when she'd sealed off the door to the Barrier entrance and built some kind of magical bulletproof stuff over the stained glass window. Which was great for mildly annoying the anomaly, not so great for the throne room itself. With the doorway blocked off the left side was now in shadow, while the extra pane over the stained-glass Delta Rune had inadvertently turned it into an oversized magnifying glass when the sunlight hit it just right.

Now one half of Asgore's garden was wilting from lack of light, while the other half was a semi-overgrown mess slowly frying to to a crisp underneath Alphys' glorious Delta Rune death-laser/fire hazard. Around the center of the room, the surviving flowers were doggedly twining up the legs of Asgore's throne as if trying to escape the floral carnage going on beneath them. Now  _there_  was a metaphor for you. Not that Sans had any idea what it might represent, since Alphys had just about worked herself down to the bone trying to keep people from metaphorically wilting or scorching or... climbing up onto... chairs? Anyway.

Sans stretched, then leaned back to rest his skull against one arm of the throne and his ankles on the other, draped across the seat like a really poorly-dressed cat.

So far he'd been pointedly incurious when it came to Alphys' behavior. As long as she kept doing her job and didn't come home from wherever-she-was bleeding or on fire, she could sneak around all she wanted. He wasn't anybody's mom. He also wasn't really keen on stalking Alphys through the Underground based upon some weird suspicion, only to find her visiting some hithero-unknown "friend" and doing what non-skeleton monsters did with each other sometimes. She'd always been sort of endearingly terrible at hiding her crushes and she didn't seem too happy about whatever she was trying to keep secret, but you could never be totally sure.

Though if she _was_ telling the truth about where she was spending her time... well, Waterfall wasn't the kind of place that a reptile monster like Alphys visited for no reason. Too cold. She hadn't shown much interest in poking around at the garbage dump since becoming queen, and the only person she might want to visit in Waterfall had been dead for months. So with that in mind, her self-imposed isolation and general antsiness was mildly worrying. He didn't want to see anything happen to his friend, of course. He also had absolutely no intention of taking her place as monarch if it came to that, and a power vacuum was one problem the Underground really didn't need right now. Especially with the recent rash of monsters Falling Down.

Sans reached down and plucked a golden flower from beside the throne, twirling the stem between his fingers before popping it into his mouth. Despite the resemblance to buttercups, golden flowers were completely edible—sort of pleasantly bittersweet, though he didn't eat enough greens to know of any good comparisons to other flowers. If food shortages had become as much of an issue as Alphys had initially worried, maybe they could've harvested these guys and made use of the garden that way. Then he remembered that these particular flowers had grown up out of soil saturated with King Asgore's  _dust_  and spat it back out. Snails were one thing but he drew the line at cannibalism-by-proxy. And regular cannibalism. Not that that would really work for monsters, what with the whole dust thing.

The flowers rustled by the doorway.

"you didn't see that." Sans dropped the remaining half of the flower and sat up, but Alphys wasn't there. It could've just been the wind, except the doorway to the Barrier had been sealed off. And the sound had come from the wrong side of the room. Weird. Sans considered this, then decided he may as well head back to the house while he was up.

The Judgement Hall was as pristine and elegant as always, an impression only slightly marred by the presence of a grubby little skeleton in pink slippers and the faint strains of J-Pop in the distance. Wait, what?

Sans walked marginally faster until he reached the house. Alphys was still where he'd left her, slumped over the table and oblivious to her phone screeching for attention with the theme song to some show he couldn't name at that particular moment. Sans tiptoed over and delicately extracted her phone from her pocket, pressing ACCEPT and putting the musical stylings of Whoever ™ to a merciful end. It probably wasn't necessary to lower his voice if Alphys' phone had failed to wake her up, but he did so anyway. "heya. queen's secretary here. gimme 500000000 g and i'll let her know you called."

He stepped back from the table and raised his free hand. "...alright, alright. yeah, she's busy right now. whaddya need?" Alphys floated up from her chair, soul glowing light blue as he moved her onto the oversized armchair by the fireplace. She mumbled in her sleep as he set her down, but didn't wake up.

"huh. yeah, i'll check with her, but those readings sound ok to me. if none of the individual modules are working, it's probably a mechanical issue and not the power source itself." Sans pulled down the blanket draped across the back of the armchair, unfolded it, and laid it over the sleeping lizard instead. "i mean. if the core wasn't generating enough power, we'd know by now."

"...yep, sure. 'later." Sans slipped the phone back into Alphys' pocket. For the finishing touch, he produced a sprinkle-encrusted rock from his inventory, then grabbed Alphys' glasses and stuck them onto said rock before putting it up on the mantle to watch over her. It was only early evening, but he was pretty sure she'd be conked out for the rest of the night.

 

With important official business attended to and also some question about the Core answered, Sans slid his hands back into his pockets and slouched back out of the house.

 

* * *

 ENTRY NUMBER 06:

* Today I gave my second real address since the attack.  
* I was so anxious that I kept forgetting what I was going to say.  
* Everyone was really nice about it, but...  
* Their patience will have to run out eventually, won't it?

* * *

 Cabbage paced from one side of the room to the other, then spun around to fling their weapon down at the floor. The magic arrow bounced off and dissipated in a burst of sparkles, startling one of their Froggit housemates and sending it hopping away in fright. Reaper Bird slid their beak/legs around to face the source of the noise but was otherwise unfazed, too busy melting into their own reflection in the mirror to pay much attention. They  _loved_  mirrors, for some reason.

Meanwhile, the weapon's owner dropped down onto the floor and buried their head in their hands. As a Whimsun, this was typically the point at which they burst into tears and hid somewhere until a stronger monster—preferably the nearest Whimsalot—came along to help. Actually, no, as a Whimsun they would have fled  _long_  before even  _considering_  a confrontation with the queen like the day before. But their eldest sister had more or less ceased to exist as an independent entity, their younger sibling was lying comatose two rooms away, and the rest of their extended family had been murdered by the human. There wasn't anyone else left to fix this, unless one counted the Froggits.

Cabbage had heard from other monsters that Queen Alphys would deny their request, just as she had with everyone else, but they just couldn't believe it until they experienced it for themselves. She had protected hundreds of people from the human, she'd restored dozens of seemingly dead monsters to their families on a day when so many others were lost, and she'd led the Underground out of its darkest time since Monsterkind was first imprisoned. But now that she was needed again, she flatly  _refused_  to help anyone whose friends or family had Fallen. Cabbage had been sure that they could persuade her to help if they just explained the situation, but she'd brushed them off like a simple inconvenience. It didn't make sense—even that skeleton friend of hers had been more genuinely sympathetic!

There was a distorted buzz from a sticky blotch on the mirror. "riiwhbsbaitt somaetcrohinakg wbwroaobngoyf."

The Whimsalot raised their head and nodded in agreement, though they didn't have the energy to try and puzzle out its sort-of sibling's meaning right now. "...Yes. There's still hope," they murmured, holding out a gloved hand to re-summon their weapon. Reaper Bird was alive and, well... not  _exactly_  well, but at least content with their current form of existence. Probably. And their sibling was alive too, and would remain so for at least a few days before their soul faded. They had time—the real trouble was figuring out how to spend that time.

During the evacuation, then-Doctor Alphys had explained that resurrecting Fallen monsters was never the goal of her work, but an unexpectedly happy side-effect. If what she'd said yesterday was also true, then simply repeating the process to create another Reaper Bird was not an option. But there had to be something else, some other idea she hadn't thought of at the time. Maybe an alternate plan she'd never ended up using, or an idea she just doubted would work. Other research. Something. Anything. Maybe this was all a waste of time and effort, but they would never forgive themselves if they gave up now.

They frowned under their helmet, idly twirling their weapon around. If Queen Alphys didn't want to help, it might still be possible to see what she had in store. Cabbage had been in her basement lab once. While they had been too busy fearfully huddling together with their siblings to properly explore the lab, they knew the Amalgam monsters like Reaper Bird had been hidden down there. If any other information on the topic existed, that was where it would be. The problem, of course, was not merely getting in. Breaking into the queen's basement was probably illegal if not outright treasonous somehow, though they weren't sure of the consequences for such a crime. People were banished or executed all the time in old stories of human knights and kings and queens, but that sort of thing never happened in the Underground. Partly because there wasn't anywhere to send a banished monster, and partly because they rarely did anything worthy of serious punishment anyway.

Two more Froggits were now peering out from around the corner and meowing in disapproval at the arrow-throwing, but Cabbage paid them no mind as they dismissed their weapon and fluttered off to the bedroom. They'd once asked Reaper Bird if monsters really could hear what was said to them after they'd Fallen Down. The answer only confirmed what they'd always suspected all along, and made them feel just a little less irrational about their need to tell their Fallen sibling what they were up to.

"Luna?" The Whimsalot pulled off its helmet as it entered the darkened room and perched on the edge of the bed. They paused and ruffled their wings, neither expecting nor receiving an answer. Their sibling looked just as their elder sister had before she'd Fallen Down. Asleep. And the only way that would change was if Cabbage managed to pull off some sort of miracle, or... or something else happened.

"I have to leave again. I'm going to find something that will help you.

...Don't give up yet. Please."

 

Before they left, Cabbage  stopped at the mirror and asked Reaper Bird to look after everyone while they were gone. They were incoherent and half melted and, quite frankly, still a hundred times more reliable than the Froggits.

* * *

ENTRY NUMBER 10:

* even if it meant hurting those people all over again, i would give anything for life to go back to how it was  
* i miss everyone so much it hurts, and i miss her most of all  
* i just want to see her again and tell her i love her and thank her and say im sorry and that i didn't mean for any of this to happen i just want to talk to her one last time and i can't because SHE'S GONE AND NEVER COMING BACK

* * *

The ache in the Amalgamate's head hadn't subsided since the day before. There had been blue flashes of light against the glass, though when or why this happened was a complete mystery. But then its head hurt worse and worse until the Amalgamate exhausted itself and sank into a merciful half-sleep, and it was in this state when the blurry yellow monster returned, carrying a jar containing a small amount of something gray, and a small tube that burned red.

That meant there would be needles.

Normally the Amalgamate would resist what came next, but this time it had so little energy that it barely reacted as she pulled it up from the water and began the injections. First the red. Then gray. The needles themselves didn't hurt much, but the burning was horrific and everything after that left it itchy and confused and struggling to hold its body together in the right shape. Afterwards, if it stayed still long enough for her to manage it, Alphys usually injected something else that dulled the pain and its mind along with it.

She made approving noises at the Amalgamate once the injections were over, then she released it and it sank limply down to the bottom of the tank. Alphys sat down on the other side of the glass. Usually it would growl and hiss and try to get away from her by this point, but moving wasn't really worth the effort. Its head hurt too much. Alphys was speaking now, but it couldn't hear anything much outside of the tank. As she sat by its side and talked, the Amalgamate stared at the glass with its eye unfocused until the yellow monster and its own reflection blurred together.

Too dazed to think and too sore to fall asleep just yet, it allowed whatever remained of its mind to drift away like stray bubbles, leaving its melted, aching body far behind. It saw-felt-heard

_Humming magic, bruises and dented metal and wind howling through their hair - huge, frightened eyes in a round yellow face - a golden hall that stretched on and on for miles, rough tree bark from the stick in her hand as she marched - boots crunching through snow and running, laughing, bones rattling as she pounced and rolled onto - the floor in her room, lying on their bellies as they watched bright colors flicker across the screen - sitting by the pond - singing - golden flower tea and bright light - salt in the air, Alphys leaning into her side as dogs ran across the warm sand and a human child splashed in the water - distant roaring like blood rushing through her ears and - burning - burning - burning..._

"Al... ph... ys..." it gurgled, stirring in place.

\---

Alphys relaxed ever so slightly as the creature in the tank refocused its eye on her.  "Um... hi." She hugged her knees against her chest, curling her tail around herself. The Amalgamate—no,  _Undyne_ still wasn't moving much, but she was alert and that was always a good sign. Alphys smiled weakly. "Undyne, are y-you okay?"

Then she realized what she'd just asked and laughed, then hiccuped, then clutched her knees harder against her front and dragged her sleeve over her eyes. "...N-no. Of c-course you're not. Sorry. Th-that was kind of a stupid question. ...Sorry," Alphys laughed again, her voice quavering.

The tank's filter went on humming as water gently lapped at the glass overhead. This place was sort of peaceful, in a sickly kind of way. You could fall asleep in here and never wake up. Undyne squirmed forward, shifting around to slump against the glass. Alphys watched her for a minute and slowly scooted closer, a little bit afraid to do so after yesterday. But Undyne hardly seemed to notice as she leaned against the glass on the opposite side. Alphys trailed one claw in little spirals across the smooth surface, sensing rather than actually seeing Undyne tracking the movement. "C-can you hear me in there?" She paused and tapped the claw against the glass, but her friend's eye was sliding shut. Alphys pulled her hand back and hugged herself, and for a while the pair sat quietly together in the deserted lab. "Do you hate me?" 

She looked back up, but the painkillers were finally kicking in, it seemed. The Amalgamate had drifted off to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I'm getting too obsessive about word count, I should focus on quality over quantity" I whisper to myself as I write a chapter at 4 am with the bare minimum of revisions, lollll.
> 
> Also, all the sweet comments on the first chapter are appreciated. ♥


	3. Best Friend

ENTRY NUMBER 03:

* Any human that enters the Underground will be closely monitored.  
* Firstly, I'll send out an alert and initiate emergency evacuation procedures.  
* If the human appears to be, well, normal then the royal guard will detain and question them to verify their intentions.  
* Only then will I decide how to move forward.

* * *

 Once she was sure Undyne was out, Alphys packed up her supplies and tucked the tiny remaining amount of Determination back into her inventory. Then she had to spend a minute fumbling around for a pen to update her friend's medical chart,  _GOD_  she missed having real pockets. It would've been so much easier to go back to wearing lab coats, at least while she was down here, but washing them would be too much of a hassle. She already spent a suspicious amount of time away from New Home on a daily basis as it was.

Finally Alphys located an old gel pen Bratty and Catty lent her a while back and scribbled in the day's notes on her friend's progress. Despite her alarming (lack of) behavior, Undyne had been growing more and more stable over the course of the past week, and it was this fact alone that prevented Alphys from crumbling into a complete anxious wreck. In all likelihood Undyne was just having a bad day, but the possibility of a more serious problem always haunted Alphys. She might have created the Amalgamates but that didn't mean she knew much more about them than anyone else. Even pain medicine dosages involved an uncomfortable amount of guesswork; the Amalgamates had more physical matter than normal monsters of their size, and their size wasn't even consistent anyway because they were constantly melting and re-forming. If Undyne was sick with some sort of Amalgamate-specific ailment that couldn't be fixed by throwing Determination at the wall until it stuck, then realistically Alphys stood very little chance of fixing it. Even if Determination _was_ the answer, there might be too little left to cure Undyne. She might even make it worse if she tried, and if Alphys had to watch her best friend die because of her  _again_ then she might actually lose her mind.

Alphys capped the pen, set it down, and gripped onto the countertop with both hands. She was letting her thoughts get away from her again, jumping to the worst possible conclusion even when there was no reason for it. Undyne was almost definitely fine. She might or might not remember Alphys on any meaningful level, and if she did then she probably hated Alphys' guts because why  _wouldn't_ she, but physically she was fine.

And because of that, Alphys had no right to feel any misgivings. She had what she'd wanted, didn't she?

She checked one last time to make sure her friend had food for whenever she woke up, lingering by the tank's side before forcing herself to turn away and head back up to the elevator. Staying down here a little longer was tempting, but she couldn't afford to do that after yesterday. Besides, there'd been a report about the puzzles in the Core acting strangely, according to Sans. It had been an issue ever since the human came, but never a top priority then or now—though it really was something she'd have to deal with sooner or later, if only to figure out exactly what might be going wrong.

Core maintenance probably wasn't a queenly sort of task, but overseeing its operation had been one of her responsibilities as the royal scientist, and it wasn't like she'd forgotten how to do that between then and now. Alternatively she could've sent Sans, but he didn't like being in the Core. His reasons for that had always been kind of vague, but she didn't mind; if anything, spending a few hours doing a job for which she was actually  _qualified_ was kind of a relief.

\---

 Cabbage hovered by the elevator and pressed the "down" button again. When it still failed to light up after their third try, they let the fake bathroom sign flip back down to hide the button panel. The possibility that Queen Alphys might lock the elevator to keep people out was completely reasonable but still hadn't occurred to them until roughly ten seconds ago. Despite all their lofty ideals about holding onto hope, their heart sank. If a key to the elevator existed then Queen Alphys surely had it, and they couldn't very well just rob her.

 Out of frustration the Whimsalot flipped its weapon around and slid the arrow-point in between the elevator doors, pulling with all their strength. Which, as they had roughly the size and muscle mass of a two-foot tall wad of cotton candy, accomplished absolutely nothing. They dropped down onto their feet in hopes of gaining more leverage, earning nothing but sore shoulders for their efforts. Their wings drooped down.

 Then they straightened back up. If they were prepared to sneak into the basement lab then they might as well go all the way and break in—what difference did it make if they were caught? Unless they _actually_  mugged Queen Alphys, it wasn't like this could get much worse.

 No regrets.

Whimsuns weren't exactly known for magical strength any more than physical strength, and for good reason, but Cabbage wasn't exactly a Whimsun anymore. They raised their weapon and two parallel rows of what seemed to be pale, glowing butterflies flickered into existence along the gap between the doors. Another gesture, and the magic attack pushed outward. At first it appeared about as effective as Cabbage's original attempt, but finally there was a muted  _crack_ and, a few seconds later, the clang of something metal striking a metal surface far below. Whatever they'd just broken had apparently been what was keeping the doors shut, and they now slid open with relative ease. Behind them was... not an elevator.

 Cabbage peered between the doors and down into the empty elevator shaft. Then they realized that in a fight between the doors' closing mechanism and a few dozen magic butterflies, their  _neck_ was most likely to lose. They withdrew their head, then darted through the gap before dismissing their attack and letting the doors slide shut.

Apart from the faint glow of their own wings, the shaft was dark—in the flickering light, they could see what looked like the handholds for a ladder projecting out from the wall. Probably convenient, for workers who didn't have wings. Cabbage trailed their hand across the railings as they headed along the only possible path: down. Then they yanked their hand away. Even with gloves on, there couldn't be a single surface in here that had ever once been cleaned, and while they weren't a germaphobe, mostly, they had standards.

They had expected to encounter the elevator car at some point, but after descending several yards, they located a dim greenish line of light near the bottom  of the elevator shaft—that had to be the doorway into the basement lab. The shaft itself tapered off here and continued at a right angle towards some other elevator location in the lab, but Cabbage didn't particularly feel like exploring what amounted to a creepy extra-subterranean tunnel when there was a perfectly serviceable creepy hallway mere feet away from them. Remembering what had happened as they'd first opened the elevator doors up above, they carefully felt around the top of the doors here until they located some sort of metal box with a latch. Once the latch was _un_ -latched, they found they were just barely strong enough to physically shove the door open and slip through. 

 They were here.

Cabbage dropped down onto their floor in a puff of grease-stained white skirts, clutching their weapon like the most uncomfortably pointy security blanket in the world. Breaking into someone's basement wasn't quite the same thing as running away from home to become a mercenary like some of their elder siblings, but it was still the gutsiest thing they'd ever done, apart from being mildly rude to the queen the day before. It was also a lot less legal, but at this point they didn't feel much need to think about that. It was a problem, but a problem to deal with _after_ finding some way to help Luna.

Once they'd caught their breath, Cabbage jumped back into the air and fluttered down the hallway to find some sort of recognizable landmark.

The basement lab was easily the most objectively unnerving place they'd ever visited—including the dark elevator shaft they'd flown through roughly two minutes ago—but it was the once place the human had never been able to reach. Cracked wall plaster and layers of (non-monster) dust notwithstanding, it was safe. Completely safe. Cabbage gripped their weapon against their chest as they entered the main foyer, nervously eyeing the cobwebs draped around a tattered fake plant in the corner. As far as they remembered, somewhere to the northeast was a big room full of hospital cots, which had been pushed against the walls during the evacuation to make room for everyone else's sleeping bags or blankets. It had been a pointless effort, really. Nobody got much sleep over the course of those nights, and it wasn't because of the overcrowding issue.

Cabbage picked a direction and got moving, mostly so they wouldn't have to keep staring at those cobwebs. It didn't work; the corners of the ceilings throughout the lab were covered in the stuff.

There'd been a bathroom as well, and a room with several refrigerators and another with sinks. That was more or less where Cabbage's knowledge ended, though they assumed there were exam rooms or machines or other such things elsewhere in the lab. They didn't really know much about science or laboratories, and even their interest in human history was mostly limited to the era of knights and castles.

 Cabbage whirled around as a flash of movement caught their eye, only to realize that it was just their reflection in the mirror. This was probably the exact spot where Reaper Bird spent all their time down here—it was safe. Definitely safe.

Then they were  _sure_ that the dusty golden flowers in the high shelf behind them had moved, but of course their nerves were just getting the better of them. Cabbage shook themselves and continued down the hall until they reached a dead end, then backtracked. The video screens dotting the walls were darkened, and didn't turn on when Cabbage poked at them. They sighed. What they really needed to find were old books, or notes, or something like that. Scientists were supposed to write down their findings, that much they knew, so whatever records Alphys kept must have been down here at some point. Hopefully.

 Continuing further into the lab, Cabbage found a deserted exam room, a  storage closet filled with a few dusty cardboard boxes of what looked like plastic tubing and metallic parts of something-or-other, plus another closet which was empty save for a pile of  _wigs._  Maybe they had been for Mettaton or something. Past that was a room with an outdated television set, flanked by bookshelves filled with old VHS tapes.

 Glancing over their shoulder toward the door, Cabbage grabbed a tape at random and put it on. The speakers hissed, and the screen remained dark, and at first they wondered if the tapes were broken somehow. Then they thought they could hear a few scattered syllables here and there, and turned up the audio.

_—right. No! I'd never doubt you, Chara... Never! Y... yeah! We'll be strong! We'll free everyone! I'll go get the flowers._

They didn't recognize the voice from the television, but it was soft and childish, and brought to mind images of nightshade flowers and lavender. Cabbage shivered and left the room.

Back out in the hallway, Cabbage could hear a kind of low mechanical hum, a little like an elevator running. They followed the sound past a few more deserted rooms and towards the last door at the end of the hall. Their eyes widened as they glanced inside, dismissing their weapon and pulling off their helmet for a better look.

While this place looked more or less like the other exam rooms they'd seen, they had definitely never been in here before—they would have remembered the giant fishtank.

The weak green light from overhead made the water inside look dirtier than it probably was, but there was a large white blob of  _something_ pressed against the glass along the bottom. Cabbage drew closer, then flew up to hover above the tank. From this angle it was easier to identify the creature as, well, a creature. It looked a bit like a small child had tried to sculpt a mermaid—or maybe a fish skeleton—out of melted white candle-wax and glowing toothpicks. The not-quite-mermaid had folded itself up a way that only slime monsters and Amalgams could comfortably manage, having no bones to break in the process. Cabbage frowned, gripping their helmet between their hands.

Even if one didn't know the individual monsters within an Amalgam, it was usually possible to tell what each body part had originally been, and what sort of monster had first possessed it. This creature was as melted and pale as all the others, but Cabbage had no idea who or what it might have been made from. Process of elimination wasn't any help, either. As far as anyone knew, all the Amalgams had long since gone home to live with whatever remained of their families.

 That was what everyone knew, or thought, because it was what Queen Alphys had  _told_ them. Maybe it was new, but she said that she couldn't make any more Amalgams. Why would she have lied?

Cabbage backed away from the tank and looked around the room. It wasn't so different from the exam rooms like it, except for the tank and associated clutter—along the other wall by the tank sat a pile of buckets, hoses, and tools they couldn't identify at a glance. There was a sink, and a few cabinets, and a  countertop below it with a clipboard of papers. They went to investigate, but the clipboard mostly seemed to be full of medical charts they couldn't quite understand. Not so much because they were terribly complicated, but because the handwriting was completely atrocious. So far as they could tell, though, Queen Alphys was monitoring something called "D.T." in this person—or _these people_ , rather. The most recent entry was from only a little less than two hours ago, according to the listed time and date.

The last page was also written out in glittery pink for some reason, which Cabbage was pretty sure wasn't standard scientific procedure. But what did they know?

Picking their helmet back up, Cabbage shivered and looked around. The Amalgam in the tank was sitting up, watching them with the single dark eye in its melted face. Its pupil glowed in the dim water. Unease twisted through Cabbage's belly, but that wasn't fair. The Amalgams were all strange, maybe, but they were still basically the same monsters they'd always been, at heart.

 "Hello," the Whimsalot said. "Are you new..?"

 The Amalgam stared blearily back at them, and despite  _knowing_ that it was probably half-asleep and meant no harm, they still felt unsettled. "My name is Cabbage. Do you have a name?"

It didn't respond, and finally something rather obvious occurred to  Cabbage. They pointed towards the side of their head, then cupped their hand around where their ear would be if it was externally visible. "...Can you hear?"

 That seemed to get through. Eventually. The Amalgam blinked, and stared, then shook its head and glanced up towards the top of the tank. It was covered with a lid made of some kind of thick metal mesh, but there was a roughly one-foot gap between the water's surface and the lid. It swam up and poked its head out of the water. Before they could try speaking again, it suddenly gasped in pain and ducked back down into the water. Cabbage wasn't sure why the creature would have been hurt by that, but felt slightly terrible anyway. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize..."

It was too busy clutching its head to even look in Cabbage's direction, and they'd already established that  the tank-Amalgam couldn't hear them. It seemed they weren't going to get a direct answer. Still cringing a little, Cabbage picked the clipboard back up and flipped through it again, squinting down the columns of scribbled notes for a name. And there, on the second page: "Undyne".

... _Undyne_ _?_

The only monster they knew of by that name was the old captain of the royal guard, who'd served King Asgore before dying at the hands of the human somewhere in Waterfall. They didn't know much more than that, but it was still enough to leave them troubled.

Had Queen Alphys found a way to bring people back—not just those who'd Fallen Down, but monsters who were  _dead_? Why hadn't she told anyone? Why hadn't she told  _them_?

Or if she'd "just" named her new creation after the old king's guard captain, then that still raised some disturbing questions. Cabbage slid the page out from the clipboard, then noticed that the Amalgam was watching them again, seemingly recovered from whatever it had done to itself a few minutes ago.

"Is your name 'Undyne'?" they asked the creature as it watched them. It didn't answer, and probably couldn't, and went on staring with a face whose expression was impossible for them to read. It seemed like living with Reaper Bird should've provided some kind of advantage in that sense, but  they barely ever understood what Reaper Bird was feeling or trying to say, either.

Finally coming to a decision, they grabbed the page from the clipboard again and stuffed it into their inventory before exiting the room. They'd learned  _something_ , even if they weren't quite sure what that "something" was, but if their guesses were anywhere near correct then maybe they'd found what they'd been seeking. They backtracked through the lab as quickly as they could without getting lost again, got turned-around anyway, but eventually reached the main foyer. They were about to head down the hallway from which they'd come in, when they saw that the main elevator here was powered on; at least, the colored bulbs along the doors had power, and glowed brightly in the gloom. The doors slid open automatically as Cabbage approached, and gratefully they flew inside—maybe breaking into to elevator shaft the first time had automatically turned the power on, somehow? They weren't quite sure if that was how it worked, but it made sense.

Then the doors failed to open even after the elevator juddered to a stop, and Cabbage wondered if maybe they'd broken something after all.

Then the lights flickered.

Cabbage had a sinking feeling in their gut which was only tangentially related to the fact that they were in an elevator. They summoned their weapon to repeat their earlier trick, but the elevator began to descend again, then stopped. The ceiling lights died without any further warning, leaving only the glow of Cabbage's wings against the cheerfully-colored floor tiles. 

And then they were falling.

Instinctively Cabbage took to the air again, not quite hyperventilating but certainly getting there. An alarm was blaring from someplace overhead, though the computerized voice failed to register as anything more than a wall of sound in their panicky state.

 

" **WARNING! WARNING! ELEVATOR LOSING POWER! EM TETHER STABILITY LOST! ALTITUDE DR—** "

 

Had they been a little more scientifically-minded, Cabbage might have known what usually happened in hypothetical scenarios involving elevators and hovering moths. As the car hit bottom the small monster slammed against the ceiling hard enough to crack the light fixture's casing. The impact left them too stunned to even begin to react in time as they hurtled back down to the floor, and then they were done thinking about hypotheticals or much of anything else.

* * *

 ENTRY NUMBER 04:

* Of course...  
* For this plan to work, I need a royal guard.   
* And I don't know if rebuilding would be worth it.  
* The human killed almost all of the old guard without any trouble.  
* I don't want any more people to die because of me.

* * *

 Even from its tank, the Amalgamate could feel the vibrations of a distant explosion echo through the water. It raised its head to look around, but the tank and the room outside it still looked the same as ever. There had been a small white shape that had entered and moved around and left almost as quickly as it had come, but that had been small and quiet and nothing at all like what the Amalgamate had just heard. It knew better than to swim facefirst into the glass this time, but frustration welled up inside of it anyway as its upper limbs pressed against the clear surface, leaving behind a grayish film that blurred its view even further. It wanted to know what was happening and it couldn't, it could barely move at all, and with no other outlet for its anger it  pounded against the side of the tank until water began to slosh out onto the floor again.

Hitting the glass didn't really accomplish anything, but it did make the Amalgamate feel a little bit better.

No longer quite so worked-up, it floated in place as the water around it returned to relative stillness. It didn't exactly feel  _good_ , but with enough effort it could think, and actually hold onto those thoughts long enough to do something with them. Given enough time, at least. The creature floated, and wondered distantly if the loud sound and the quiet little white thing had anything to do with each other. They were both... different. Something new.

The Amalgamate turned its attention up towards the top of the tank and swam as close as it could without actually breaking the surface. Thin lines of metal criss-crossed over the top of the glass, close enough for the Amalgamate to reach out of the water and touch if it wanted to. But the open air hurt like the worst sunburn it had ever had. It couldn't remember was the "sun" was or what it might look like—it couldn't remember most things very clearly—but that was the comparison its mind came up with.

More importantly—exposing its face to the open air had hurt, but nothing actually stopped it from doing so. The metal covering the tank was in the way, but if it could just get past that, then...

For the first time that it could consciously remember, the Amalgamate smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I probably wrote out six or seven iterations of this chapter before ending up with something I was reasonably happy with—I couldn't even tell you why it gave me so much trouble, but it did.
> 
> Anyway, I'm starting an internship tomorrow and will be updating in the general vicinity of ~~once a week~~ WHENEVER from here on out.


	4. Whatever You Are

ENTRY NUMBER 17:

* Undyne is slowly getting stronger.  
* Considering what little I had to work with, she's doing SO well.  
* I'm relieved, of course.  
* After seemingly losing her forever...  
* It's okay if she's angry at me.

* * *

Of all the disappointments to be found in the Underground, Undyne was one of the worst. Being boring was forgivable, everyone got boring sooner or later, but even by those standards she should have been so much more interesting than she turned out to be. When he killed her for the first time, she'd screamed and melted and still kept trying to attack until she was dust—she'd  _melted_ , and melting meant Determination. Something that no ordinary monster was supposed to possess. The possibilities seemed endless then; maybe she was some kind of genetic mutant, maybe Alphys was slipping a little something extra into her friend's homemade ice cream for some insane reason he could have fun deciphering. Maybe, somehow... Undyne might be  _like him_.

So, naturally, he'd tested her until he knew everything worth knowing about the fish. As he discovered the first time he killed her, she could cling to life out of sheer spite when pressed. She lasted longer if he'd killed monsters beforehand, and could get positively  _feisty_ with the right motivation—strangling Alphys with vines and making her watch usually did the trick. Papyrus made decent fish-bait as well, but using him wasn't as much fun. While Alphys always cried and screamed for help, he only begged for  _Undyne_ 's mercy on behalf of poor misguided "Flowery". It was completely pathetic and not even the entertaining kind.

No matter how persistently Flowey asked, cajoled, or threatened, Alphys never admitted to injecting her friend with anything, and Undyne herself never even knew what he was talking about.  With no way to determine if she actually was some kind of freak of nature or not, he was forced to conclude that the fish probably just really,  _really_ wanted to protect her friends.

What the HELL was Flowey supposed to do with that?

She wasn't even annoying enough for the sadism to be its own reward, beyond what it did to Alphys. And so Flowey finally gave up on his experiments and returned to the usual program; toying with Papyrus while dodging the smiley trashbag's notice, messing with Doctor Alphys' mind, and making on-and-off efforts to get at the human SOULs despite Asgore's stubborn refusal to cooperate.

This was what he'd been doing when Chara came back.

Inventive, witty, clever Chara—the one who always knew what to do and what games they should play, the one who could put together ingenious plans that would have worked if a certain stupid crybaby hadn't ruined them. Chara, whose strangely distant mannerisms only encouraged said crybaby to do whatever it took to stay in their good graces. Chara, with their stolen SOUL, who finally came back when he called to them.

The fact that they'd left him behind again only slightly bruised Flowey's faith in his adoptive sibling. According to the few stories he managed to wheedle out of Chara, the surface world was much more interesting than the Underground, and that was before they'd returned from the dead, claimed a new SOUL, and achieved the LV they now possessed. Of course they were having fun up there, even without him. But they came back when he called, hadn't they? They hadn't forgotten—they'd left him a brand new toy to play with, after all. Clever as always, they'd taken the most disappointingly dull monster in the whole Underground and turned her into something different than anything he'd seen before. Or at least, into something with that potential; it wouldn't be the first time he'd had to influence a monster's behavior to properly suit his whims. 

Flowey usually didn't wait this long before performing a RESET, but Chara had always been more patient than he was. Well, he could be patient now. His sibling remembered him, and they'd shown him proof that they were still his best friend. They hadn't forgotten. Eventually they would come back, and together the two of them would finish what had been started. He would be reunited with the one person who truly understood him and they would never be parted again. As long as Flowey held onto this hope, life in the current iteration of the Underground was tolerable.

For himself, at least.

The little flower reached out with a single vine, prodding at the gooey mass with a grimace. Gross. Undyne... well, "Undyne" had discovered the hard way why Alphys was keeping her in that fish tank, but apparently she was too stupid to figure out how to get back there. Instead she'd wandered over to another room with a sink, broke it, and commenced melting into the ever-expanding puddle of tap water she'd created. Although Flowey had moderately high hopes for his new toy's future, this was a pretty sorry state for what had once been the captain of the royal guard.

"Hey. ...HEY." Flowey leaned forward on his stem, but didn't quite have the stomach—hah hah, gag, barf—to try touching her again. The puddle had been warm in ways that puddles of indeterminate fluids really should not be. "Are you even alive?"

"Undyne?"

"Wake UP."

"..."

"Anime is real."

"Anime's NOT real!"

The blob didn't even twitch. Flowey twisted his face into a nightmarish mockery of a grin and hissed out, "I'll kill your girlfriend and make you watch. How does that sound?"

When even that failed to elicit a response, Flowey immediately grew bored and decided to go see how things were shaping up over in the broken elevator. Then the gray-white puddle twitched once, then twice, sending out little ripples in the water. You had to admit, Undyne's dramatic timing was pretty good. Or whatever.

Flowey obligingly stopped to watch as the thing's surface wavered and distorted, as if trying to piece together a proper physical body for itself from memory alone. The head and torso were first, then arms, and then the smaller details; a short ponytail, angular ear-fins, and spikes protruding out from broad shoulders. Its torso had just begun to develop a metallic sheen when the whole thing collapsed under its own weight, dissolving back into a featureless lump.

The second attempt was more successful, as the goal of its Determination seemed to shift. Hair, spikes, and ear-fins were all wastes of energy and body mass that could be used to form more necessary features—which apparently didn't include a face. In fact, the thing didn't have much of anything going for it except a vaguely humanoid head and upper body plus arms to prop itself up. Flowey awarded it a C+ for effort.

"Hmph. Alphys really messed you up, huh?" The soggy, melted  _thing_ just sat there, blinking stupidly at him. "Yeah. YOU."

It made a strange, guttural noise that only vaguely resembled Undyne's gruff contralto. The resemblance was Flowey's only hint that the creature was trying to say something and not just making noises. Actually, it might have just been making noises. "What? I'm just telling you the truth. If you're mad about being alive, tell HER about it, not me."

". . ."

The melted creature didn't answer, but he could hear it breathing. The sound was wet and raspy and incredibly unpleasant.

"If you ask me, though... you're more to blame for this than Alphys. And trust me, I'm not saying that because I want to defend HER." The little flower swayed in some imaginary breeze, his cheerful yellow petals garishly bright against the gray-stained water that swirled around his stem. The smile on his face was brighter still.

"Al...phys..."

So it COULD talk. Interesting. "Uh-huh, Alphys. Remember her?" Without anything more to contribute, apparently, the thing went quiet again. Except for that awful breathing. Flowey still waited a little longer before going on, just to be sure. "...Anyway, as I said. If you hadn't given Chara a reason to keep going... a really challenging fight, for example... maybe they wouldn't have killed you and all your friends. And then Alphys wouldn't have done. You know. THIS."

Gray rivulets trickled down the side of the thing's face before plopping down into the water below, the creature's misshapen body wavering and shifting before regaining some bare semblance of stability. Flowey felt nothing, but the kind of nothing where pity would've gone had he been capable of such a worthless emotion.  He neither cared for nor hated Undyne, obviously, but either way it was a shame that she would probably never comprehend exactly what her dear friend Alphys had inflicted upon her.

Flowey let out an exaggerated sigh, halfheartedly flicking at his reflection in the grimy water with one of his leaves. "You don't remember anything, do you? Maybe you really ARE brain-dead."

As his attention shifted downward, the thing that had been Undyne launched itself at Flowey. Without much of a hand to speak of, the end of its arm wrapped around his stem and held him fast, its touch slimy and sticky and feverishly hot. Flowey hadn't felt real fear in ages, but the physical sensation was completely revolting—like being grabbed by a giant prehensile tongue. "HEY! What the hell is your PROBLEM?!"

He tried to pull himself back down into the floor, but the thing's grip was so tight that his leaves and petals certainly wouldn't be coming with him. Escape in any other direction wasn't possible either, given that he was rooted to the ground. Great. Just WONDERFUL.

The Amalgamate-thing crouched low to the floor, supporting itself with its free arm as it clutched onto Flowey with the other. Its eye was narrowed.

"Let GO," he demanded, squirming and struggling to escape. No creature that sickly-looking should have been able to move that fast, and it definitely should not be looking at him the way it was. The thing held on so tightly that he feared it might be planning to rip him out of the ground like the flower that he was. Separating Flowey from his roots would be like tearing off a person's arms and legs; the fact that Chara would RESET soon enough didn't make the prospect of being dismembered  _right now_ any more attractive. 

"N...o..."

 Snapping at the thing probably wasn't a good idea, but he did it anyway. "Come ON!"

"...N... ...o ..."

Why was it looking at him like that? "Is this because I... jeez, I was JOKING, okay? I didn't mean it. You're NOT brain-dead. SORRY. Are you happy now?!" 

It seemed the thing _wasn't_ happy, because it just tightened its hold on him until its temporary "hand" began to soften under the pressure it exerted upon itself. Flowey redoubled his efforts to escape.

"Al...phys."

"What— about—" Flowey grunted, wriggling around in the creature's grip. Almost... "Her?!"

At last he managed to break free and duck underground,  uncomfortably sticky but otherwise none the worse for wear. He popped back up on the opposite side of the room and shook water off himself, staying safely out of not-Undyne's reach. It clutched the damaged limb against its front and hissed. Flowey realized now that he hadn't heard any of that wet-sounding, creepy breathing from it in at least a minute or two.

"Leave... her... al...one..."

"Or else WHAT, huh?" Flowey spat back, feeling much braver now with a solid ten feet in between them. "You're gonna MELT on me?"

The thing bared its fangs and crouched further down; just to be safe, Flowey backed off until he was nearly at the doorway before shifting his expression again. His voice was still his own, but the face at the center of his bright yellow petals was a near-perfect imitation of the reptilian scientist. "I wasn't REALLY gonna do anything to Alphys before, but maybe I will now, just because you asked. What do you think of THAT?"

The little flower smirked and burrowed back under the floor just as the Amalgamate threw itself at him again, exactly as he'd predicted. He didn't really intend to physically harm Alphys any time soon—on the contrary, he was  _helping_  her in his own way. After all, if he dusted her now then neither of them would get to see the consequences of her latest experiment.

And where was the fun in that?

* * *

Alphys held her breath as she eased the front door shut, listening for voices over in the other room. She wasn't planning to hold audience with anyone for a little while yet, but monsters showed up at odd hours so frequently that the time of day didn't matter much. You never knew when someone might feel the need to yell at you or judge you for failing to do the impossible and save their lost friend or Fallen sibling.

It wasn't _always_ that bad. Much of the time, the monsters that came to her didn't end up asking for anything, didn't seem to want much of anything except for her to listen. Nobody had told Alphys that ruling meant acting as everyone's collective therapist, but at least it was better than trying to explain to some crying monster why she couldn't pull off a miracle for them.

Either way, she was still relieved to find the house empty, passing through to her room without incident.

The room she'd claimed as her own wasn't truly hers, of course. Judging by the toy box at the foot of one bed and the crayon drawings taped to the wall by the other, Prince Asriel and his adopted human sibling had slept here once upon a time. Moving in felt like an intrusion, which maybe it was, but Asgore hadn't exactly left the place undisturbed either. The matching quilts on the twin beds were perfectly color-coordinated and spotlessly new, only a few years old at most. Asriel's stuffed animal collection sat in a neat row on the shelf, all facing out at her with their patchy fur and scratched button eyes. That was the real tipoff: no kid would bother arranging even their most beloved toys with such meticulous care, not even a prince.

More to the point, the thought of sleeping in what had been Asgore's room—oh god, Asgore's  _bed_ — left her feeling sweaty in the most embarrassing kind of way. With only two bedrooms to choose from, she'd happily take her chances with the hypothetical angry child-ghosts. 

 Alphys locked the door and sniffed herself, only now detecting the smell of motor oil and ozone clinging to her robes as obviously as visible stains. She shucked off the dirty clothing and tossed it aside in a white-and-purple heap alongside the water-stained robe from the day before. Underneath she wore the same sort of plain pants and white tee shirt she always used to wear under her lab coats. Without the dirty robe on, she... still kind of smelled, as a matter of fact. The queen of the Underground might be kind of overdue for a shower.

She walked over to the wardrobe and pulled out a clean robe to change into.

The visit to the Core hadn't quite served as the stress relief she'd been hoping for. If it had just been a matter of walking in and finding something mechanical to take apart and put back together, that was one thing. But it was a whole other matter to bumble through awkward conversations with middle-aged monsters who'd called her "Alphy" or "kid" just a few months ago. The pet names were probably a little demeaning given that she'd technically outranked them as the Royal Scientist, but at least they fit her. Without Asgore's dignified manners and sheer physical presence, "your majesty" wasn't a title she would ever wear well.

And then, of course, there'd been her gnawing guilt at leaving Undyne alone in the lab. Alphys slipped her phone out from her pocket and rapidly typed out a message. And then another. And a third.

[ hey, sans? <.< ]

[ i'm back from the core. want to talk to u later bc i don't know what to think ]

[ but first i gotta talk to some people in a while which might take a while ^.^;; ]

 

Alphys stopped and squinted at that last message for a second.

 

[ LOLLLL REPEATING MYSELF SAID WHILE TWICE but u know wat i mean Q-Q;;;;; ]

 

Some habits never did change.

Alphys set it down as she pulled on the fresh outfit, then grunted in annoyance as the phone immediately began to ring—and kept ringing, indicating a call rather than a text. Sans _knew_ she didn't like talking on the phone if she could possibly help it. She smoothed down the upper section of her robe with the embroidered Delta Rune, feeling around on top of the dresser with her free hand.

"Heya, nerd!! How's it going?" Undyne's voice burst out out the instant Alphys pressed ACCEPT,  loudly enough that the greeting reached her ear even before the phone did. Her voice was the same scratchy, good-natured shout as always, and Alphys felt her very SOUL warming with deep affection at the sound.

"Hey—" Then she stopped dead, smile fading as her stubby fingers tightened around the phone. Just as quickly as they had sprung up, her happiness and affection mutated into shame and disappointment, striking her like a punch to the gut. Alphys stammered, momentarily winded, and the voice jumped up several octaves as the other monster burst into barely-suppressed giggles. She'd definitely heard that laugh somewhere before, but she was too focused on mentally berating herself to put much thought into it by now. If she cried after falling for such a stupid prank like this, she'd never forgive herself.

"Th-th-that wasn't funny. Who is th-this?!"

The Undyne-voice cracked and quivered for a second as the speaker regained control of themselves. "What kind of question is THAT? You're the one that brought me back. You're the one that MADE me."

"Wh-what?"

"You've been playing god again, Alphys. Haven't you?"

"...What are you t-talking a-about? Who is th-this?" Alphys repeated, her voice more forceful than she felt right now. If it wasn't for the stutter, she might have even managed to sound intimidating.

"...Well, I'm just letting you know. You really should be more careful from now on. Otherwise, something might happen to one of us," the Undyne-voice said.

Then the line went dead. 

Alphys lowered the phone, her hand trembling so badly that she nearly dropped it.

_You've been playing god again, Alphys..._

She called the number back as soon as she had the presence of mind to do so, but nobody answered—she would have been a little shocked if they actually _did_ pick up, honestly. She shoved the phone back into her pocket.

_Something might happen to one of us..._

There was exactly one person who knew the full extent of Alphys' experiments as the royal scientist, but if Sans had found out about Undyne and wanted her to know, he wouldn't have done... that. She didn't even think he  _could_ imitate her friend's voice that closely—she didn't think anyone could. Maybe it had just been some kind of bizarre hallucination, or maybe...

Alphys chewed at her claw. Then spun around and headed for the door, clumsily dialing Sans' number with one hand. It wasn't him, it couldn't have been. He didn't even like _sarcasm_ , he wouldn't have done that. That's what she wanted to believe, anyway.

The phone rang once, twice... ...five times before he finally picked up.

"S-sans?"

"mmn?" He grunted, as if she'd just woken him up.  She probably had. "whassup?"

"I... I'm s-s-sorry, but I... I need to g-go and... and d-do something, whoever's supposed to come to New Home, j-just talk to them and say I'm... I'm n-not feeling well or... I d-d-don't know, just make s-something up, okay? P-please?"

"...alph? what's wrong?"

"N-nothing!" Alphys squeaked, then finally gave up on even pretending to sound natural and pressed END. She stuffed the phone back in her pocket once again before hurrying off towards Hotland.

* * *

ENTRY NUMBER 11:

* i had an idea last night, and now i can't stop thinking about it.  
* i don't know if it will work.  
* and after my last experiments went so terribly wrong, it seems unethical to try...  
* but the alternative is even worse  
* ...  
* i just don't know what to do.

* * *

Alphys made it to the lab in record time, but that did her no good. The elevator was either broken or intentionally disabled, and not even her key could get the outer doors open to allow her to see inside. She fidgeted and shifted anxiously from one foot to the other, only marginally calmer (though much sweatier) than when she'd started over here.

Fumbling around for her cell phone, Alphys dialed Sans' number yet again. Thankfully he answered on the first ring this time, or the fragile self-control she'd maintained so far might have devolved into total panic. As she'd hurried over here, she'd almost managed to convince herself that the call was a dream of some sort brought on by chronic sleep-deprivation, but now she couldn't get into the lab and didn't know what to think. Other than that she needed to see Undyne  _right now._

"S-sans?"

"alph? you good?"

"Um. Ahh. I... I'm... I m-mean... I'm n-not... I'm okay, b-but I..." Sans waited patiently as Alphys stopped herself and tried again. "I th-think someone m-might have... done something in the l-lab and I can't get in. W-where are you?"

"...waterfall. why? you need somethin'?"

Alphys nodded uselessly, so preoccupied that it didn't occur to her to feel stupid for it. "Y-yeah. Yes. P-please. As s-s-soon as possible."

"aight," Sans said after hanging up, startling her as he suddenly flickered into existence by her side. He'd opted against the usual teleportation-centric shenanigans of walking down the "up" escalator or climbing out of a cabinet or so on, simply looking Alphys up and down before reaching out.

"guessin' you mean the other lab, yeah?" Alphys nodded and grabbed gratefully onto the offered hand. As with most of his skill set, Sans rarely used this ability of his except for avoiding effort and pulling pranks, but there were times when it proved invaluable. Such as now. There was a brief surge of magic power as Alphys' vision darkened, her body suddenly feeling incredibly, almost painfully heavy—

And then they were standing in the true lab's foyer, and it seemed that Alphys' fears had been confirmed.  _Someone_ had been down here, at least; the elevator doors were ever-so-slightly ajar, the walls around it cracked and stained pale gray. The fake plant in the corner had been knocked over and even the snack machine had been smashed open, most of its contents either missing or littered across the floor.

Alphys took in the scene then pulled her hand away from Sans' and darted away. Picking her way barefoot through the broken glass around the snack machine, she didn't doubt Sans would look terribly confused at this point if his face allowed for such an expression.

"alph, you sure you wanna be doin' that? it seems like--"

"D-don't worry about it," she interrupted. "Just... just wait here, okay? I have s-something I need to... to check." Then she was clear of the glass and free to move as fast as her long skirt would allow, alternating between fast-walking and flat-out running.

_You've been playing god again..._

Someone knew what she was doing. Even if the call had been some kind of sick joke calculated to hurt her, none of it was actually  _wrong_. 

But as long as Undyne wasn't hurt, she didn't care what happened. That was the whole reason why she'd done this; as long as she had her friend back, whatever happened would happen. It had been so easy to think that way then, at least.

Almost on cue, Alphys slipped on a wet spot on the floor and nearly fell, slapping her hand onto the wall at the last moment and at least avoiding a totally undignified faceplant. Alphys paused to catch her breath, frowning at the puddles of water along the floor all down the hall.  She slowed to a walk as she followed the trail of down the hallway and around the corner, then stopped.

Not far from her intended destination, a pale, rounded shape about as high as Alphys' waist lay against the wall like a graying, half-melted snowdrift. Alphys' heart lurched, but at the sound of her claws against the floor, the Amalgamate roused and twisted itself around to look up at her.

Without the support and gentle pressure of the water in her tank, Undyne's body had all but completely lost the shape it had managed to maintain so far. Alphys could only imagine what that  _felt_ like, but her friend was alive, and conscious. She hadn't melted away completely. Yet. Alphys smiled weakly and crouched down to the Amalgamate's eye-level, glancing around the hallway for any other sign of life. There was none. "H-hi, Undyne. Is... is everything okay? Are you by yourself?" As she drew closer, the Amalgamate slid itself away with its front limbs, then went back to leaning against the wall for support. Despite Alphys' relief and her habitual self-hatred, that still kind of hurt.

 "G...one..." the Amalgamate burbled in a distorted echo of the strong, warm voice she had heard on the phone just a few minutes earlier. But no, that wasn't right—the voice on the phone was only an imitation, and a cruel one at that. This was Undyne. The real one. What she sounded like, or what she looked like... it didn't matter.

"Someone was here, b-but they left?" Alphys tried to clarify, but the Amalgamate didn't respond again. Alphys frowned. Undyne didn't like being stuck in her tank, but if she could get out on her own then surely she would have done so ages ago. Maybe someone had let her out, or taken her out, and that was what the voice had meant..? She wished she knew exactly how long Undyne had been here, but there were no security cameras down here and in any case, the answer was still going to be "too long". Alphys scooted forward, but Undyne jerked away and made a deep, guttural noise alarmingly close to a growl. She thought she might have seen a brief flash of fangs.

"Undyne, w-we need to get you back into your tank."

The Amalgamate pushed itself away and shook its head, even as the outline of its body wavered and shifted. 

"P-please, I know you don't like it in there, b-but..."

It shook its head more forcefully.  _No._ Its whole body wavered before re-solidifying, struggling to maintain one cohesive shape. "...D-doesn't that hurt?" Alphys asked as gently as she could. The Amalgamate just looked down at its own melted form.

"I don't like it either, but.. y-you'll feel better once you're back in the water. I'm sorry, but... p-please? Just... just for a while longer?"

When the Amalgamate still didn't seem to even hear, Alphys took the opportunity to slowly, carefully inch closer. The melted being slid away again and hissed halfheartedly, but Alphys persisted. "I'm... I'm going to bring you back to the tank now, okay?"

The Amalgamate drew back once more as Alphys knelt at its side, sliding one arm around the creature's body and the other underneath. This probably wasn't the best or most efficient way to transport her friend, but she wasn't likely to move in the right direction on her own and they weren't too far from the tank room, anyway.

The hissing grew louder as Alphys rose to her feet, wobbling in place a bit before managing to steady herself. Despite her small size and timid demeanor, she was a surprisingly sturdy monster who would have little trouble picking Undyne up even under normal circumstances. She'd done it once or twice before, just to prove that she could. Undyne had thought it was hilarious.

She was even lighter than Alphys had expected now. She also felt quite warm, but that wasn't completely unusual for an Amalgamate. Once she was safely back in the water, she would be fine.

"Okay, um, h-here we go..." Alphys murmured to the squirming Amalgamate, trying and probably failing to sound calming. It was all she could do to keep the amorphous being from sliding right out of her arms and onto the floor, and while she had no idea if such a fall would hurt her friend or not, she didn't want to find out.

As Alphys walked, the Amalgamate rested its chin against her shoulder, a gesture she could only hope was a good sign. Maybe that was a little over-optimistic, given that Undyne was still hissing at her, but she took her optimism where she could get it. It had been a very long time since Undyne had been anything close to friendly towards her, never mind affectionate. Or at least intentionally initiating any form of contact. Passively tolerating her presence while heavily medicated didn't count for anything.

"D...oing... here..?" the Amalgamate rasped, going as stiff as its gelatinous body would allow as they entered the tank room. Alphys grimaced to herself. She hated doing anything that made her friend needlessly unhappy, but in this case it  _was_ needed. She just wished she could be sure that the Amalgamate would understand. "We're here so I can put you back, and th-then the... the melting... w-w-won't happen so much. That'll be good, right?"

As they neared the tank the Amalgamate went back to struggling even harder than before, nearly ending up on the floor at several points. "It-it's okay, it's okay," Alphys soothed, hearing the hard edge to her own voice and hating it. Getting mad or frustrated at her friend wasn't fair; she had no idea what Alphys was doing and, quite frankly, neither did she. But she was bad at this, and she knew it.

The melted being burbled in protest, now clutching onto Alphys' front as best as it could with its hands melted away. Circling over to the side of the tank, she stepped onto a small, square platform that lay flush against the floor. The Amalgamate jolted as the platform rose up from beneath them, lifting both monsters up to the top of the tank. Alphys leaned forward to get at a button along the side, and the mesh top automatically retracted to allow access to the water.

"I-it's okay..." Finally she managed to peel off its clinging limbs and slide it back into the water. As it sank back down, she fumbled with the controls to get the tank shut again as fast as possible. She didn't know how exactly Undyne got out the first time, but it really, really didn't need to happen again. "...S-sorry."

While the Amalgamate's body didn't instantly shift back into its previous shape as soon as it entered the water, it ceased to waver and melt quite so badly as it sank to the bottom of the tank, twisting around to right itself. "S-see? Th-th-that f-feels better, right?" Alphys asked, hopping back down onto the floor. Her robe was stained and soggy down her front and across her sleeves from holding onto the Amalgamate, but she hardly noticed at this point.

Bubbles trailed up from the Amalgamate's mouth as it tried to vocalize, not quite looking at Alphys. It prodded at the glass with its front limbs once, then twice, then clumsily turned itself around and swam back to the opposite corner of its tank. Alphys wasn't really sure how to respond to that, until she realized that it wasn't looking at her but  _past_ her. Now that Undyne wasn't in any immediate risk of harm, the obvious fact that  _there might be someone else down here_ finally returned to the forefront of Alphys' mind. She spun around and pressed her back to the tank, for all the good her protection would do if it was actually needed.

 

"alph."

Sans stood in the doorway. A small, crumpled dress dangled from his hand, dust trickling down from the white fabric and landing by his feet. His voice was the same slow, sleepy drawl as always. "think it's time you told me what's goin' on here."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe "once a week" was pretty overoptimistic as a posting schedule—and this is after I got impatient and ended the chapter at an earlier point than originally planned. Oh well, what can you do.
> 
> I'm mostly writing this for my own enjoyment (and practice) but it's still really encouraging to get some feedback. So, as I've said before, comments are very much appreciated. C:


	5. I've Failed You

~~ENTRY NUMBER -000:~~

~~* IT WOULD BE PREMATURE TO SPECULATE ABOUT THE ULTIMATE POTENTIAL OF MY NEWEST CREATION, GIVEN THAT THE SUBJECT IS STILL FAR TOO YOUNG FOR MAGIC TESTING TO BEGIN.~~  
~~* NONETHELESS, PRELIMINARY EXAMS SUGGEST THAT ITS PHYSICAL COMPOSITION REMAINS MUCH AS IT WAS PRIOR TO SOUL FORMATION.~~  
~~* IF THE SOUL LIKEWISE MORE CLOSELY RESEMBLES THAT OF A HUMAN THAN A MONSTER, THEN PERHAPS ESCAPE IS CLOSER THAN WE EVER ANTICIPATED.~~  
~~* HOWEVER, EVEN IF THIS EFFORT SHOULD PROVE FRUITLESS...~~  
~~* I MUST ADMIT TO A CERTAIN FONDNESS FOR MY LITTLE CREATION.~~  
~~* AND TO THINK THAT I ONCE PRIDED MYSELF ON A LACK OF SENTIMENTALITY...~~

* * *

_Five Minutes Earlier._

For all her flaws, Alphys was easily one of the brightest monsters Sans had ever met—which made it especially alarming to turn the corner and see her trying to pick up a  _profoundly_ pissed-off Amalgamate. The melted creature had the posture of a cornered, injured animal, leaning against the wall as it slid back in Sans' direction and away from Alphys. He'd never seen this one before—though there was something eerily familiar about it—and he could only guess at its facial expression, but every other aspect of its body language warned Alphys to back the hell off, or else.

The warning went entirely ignored as Alphys moved to wrap her arms around the Amalgamate, with such a complete lack of hesitation that Sans could only assume that she was literally trying to get her throat ripped out. Maybe she wasn't as good at picking up on subtle nonverbal signals as he was, but it took a special kind of talent to interpret hissing as _go right ahead and hug me, that will totally end well for everybody_.

Too far away (and lazy) to stop her, Sans winced as her claws touched the Amalgamate's skin. To his surprise, the physical contact didn't provoke the kind of violent response which had seemed inevitable just a few moments ago. Even as Alphys scooped it up from the floor and held it tight, the mystery-Amalgamate did nothing more than squirm against her chest like an unruly, oversized child. Sans hung back and wondered if he should intervene before Alphys pushed her luck too far and got chomped. Even if nothing had gone wrong  _yet_ , that didn't mean it wasn't about to.

At the same time, the Amalgamate's body language radiated so much hostility and tension that he wasn't sure getting involved wouldn't tip the balance and cause someone to freak out. What did Alphys think she was doing?

Actually, that was a great question to be asking in general.

Sans tiptoed after Alphys as she regained her balance and set off down the hallway, the scaly scientist murmuring something vaguely apologetic to her charge. The Amalgamate ignored her efforts, wiggling and periodically flashing a mouthful of jagged fangs as it hissed at her. Then it caught sight of Sans and mostly quit, instead giving him the stink-eye from over Alphys' shoulder for the remainder of their brief journey through the lab.

"D...oing... here..?" the Amalgamate asked of him as the doors to the next room slid open. Its voice was harsh and strained, with a weirdly gurgling quality he attributed to its melted state. The sense of familiarity to the sound _along with_ the thing's appearance was slightly less easy to explain. Sans said nothing, but didn't need to; the creature's attention had already turned back to Alphys and the giant fish tank which was apparently their destination.

"We're here so I can put you back, and th-then the... the melting... w-w-won't happen so much. That'll be good, right? ...It's okay, it's okay..." Alphys said to it, her voice abnormally high. The Amalgamate renewed its weirdly restrained struggling. ...Was that a pun? It felt like a pun. Regardless, the creature didn't look too happy with her.

Then it all clicked suddenly into place and—  _damn_ , Sans was slow on the uptake today.

 

Someone apparently broke into the lab, and that had terrified Alphys.

There was an angry Amalgamate down here.

An angry Amalgamate that didn't scare Alphys in the least. One that didn't hurt her even when it had both the chance and the motivation.

_GIANT. FISH. TANK._

 

At least this explained what Alphys had been doing for the past several weeks, even if that wasn't a question Sans had particularly needed or wanted an answer for.

Alphys hurriedly shut the tank and jumped down to the floor. Her creation gave up all resistance as soon as it was submerged, swishing what was left of its tail to keep itself right-side up.  Its eye was still on Sans as it poked at the inside of the tank, seemingly trying to direct Alphys' attention towards him before retreating to the corner to sulk.

It took a minute, but Alphys jumped about a mile high as soon as she realized he was present, pressing herself defensively against the tank as though she thought he was about to take a hammer to it. Her hands were flat against the glass, and trembling visibly.

"alph. think it's time you told me what's goin' on here," Sans said.

Alphys opened her mouth to answer, then froze up completely, dead silent with fear and guilt and something else all playing out across her face. Sans stood patiently and waited for an answer. He was good at waiting; when you thought about it, "patient" was really just a fancy way of saying "willing to stand around doing nothing longer than the other person". That was him, all right.

"Sans, w-why did you follow me here?" Alphys finally demanded, her voice quivering just as much as her hands. "Y-y-you were supposed to wait for me!"

"that was the idea. 'til i found this."

Sans held up the crumpled dress and noted Alphys' expression, feeling a weird sort of relief as her eyes widened behind her glasses. Alphys wasn't much of an actress and if she'd gained EXP recently he surely would have noticed by now, but...

"Is... is that d-dust?"

Sans nodded. "that person who broke in... well, looks like i found 'em."

His voice betrayed no particular emotion. His face, even less. If the remains he found belonged to the monster he thought they did—well, it sucked. Really, it did. They'd told him all about their siblings while the two of them waited for Alphys to show up, and he'd felt genuine empathy for their plight. But they were gone now. Just like a whole lot of other people. And Sans just didn't have it in him to feel anything about that, anymore. He couldn't afford to.

"...O-oh," Alphys said softly, shrinking back against the tank. The Amalgamate brooded from behind her, eyeing both monsters mistrustfully. Then Alphys lurched forward so suddenly that he thought for an instant that she might try to grab him. Instead she clasped her hands together in front of her chest.

"S-Sans. P-please. Don't t-tell anyone about this."

"you mean your friend here, or the dead monster in the elevator?"

"...B-both?"

"figured." Sans looked around for a place to put the dress in his hands, finally dropping it on the countertop on the other side of the room. Alphys fidgeted anxiously, then scurried over and snatched up a clipboard from the counter that he hadn't really been looking at until then, and stuffed it into a drawer.

"so, i'm guessin' that this is where you've been hanging out for the past few weeks," Sans said. Alphys gripped her hands even more tightly and nodded, hovering in the middle of the room as he approached the tank again and squatted down for a better look. The Amalgamate's body had partially re-solidified and reshaped itself over the past minute or so, until it now resembled an elongated version of the other fish Amalgamate.

The face was different, though. And the expression it wore was one Sans had seen many times. Usually about two seconds before getting chewed out by a certain guard captain for falling asleep at his post again.

Immediately Sans' mind began trying to piece together how exactly that could be possible. Well, not so much _how?_  as  _since when?_

"is this... who it looks like?" Sans asked. He hadn't been there to see it happen, but by all accounts Undyne was dead. Very, very dead. And yet here she was, right before his eyes. Eye sockets. Whatever.

Alphys' claws tapped against the floor as she joined him by the tank. The Amalgamate gurgled irritably, curling into itself as though trying to hide from the sudden, unwanted attention. Alphys almost-smiled, though Sans couldn't quite pin down the emotions behind it. She lowered her head, stroking her fingers along the glass. "Y-yes, it's Undyne. N-nobody was supposed to know until... until I can get this c-completely right. But it's her."

"...gotcha."

According to what Alphys told him several months earlier, Undyne had somehow possessed a certain amount of innate Determination. With enough DT in her system, she could have remained alive even after her body entirely liquefied, just like the unfortunate test subjects that became the first batch of Amalgamates. If the anomaly assumed Undyne was already dead and left, and Alphys  _booked it_ over to Waterfall the instant they were gone, there was a chance she could've arrived in time to heal her dying friend. The problem was that if that had happened, then he'd already know.

"when you say that... whaddya mean, exactly? is this, y'know... her?" An alternate possibility was that Alphys had recreated her friend from whole cloth, so to speak. The fish-Amalgamate bore an eerie physical resemblance to Alphys' dead friend, and its behavior was consistent with her personality, but that wasn't enough to  _prove_ they were the same being. Whether this was more or less plausible than Alphys reviving a twice-dead monster, Sans didn't have the faintest idea. He had more than his fair share of experience in science, sure, but this was not his field. It was nowhere in  _sight_ of his field.

Alphys' hand froze against the glass. "W-what is that supposed to mean?"

"...nuthin'," Sans mumbled, sensing danger ahead and immediately backpedaling like the courageous skeleton that he was. Alphys wiped her hands against the stained fabric of her skirt before setting them down to rest on her lap.

"I-it's her. This is her. I b-brought her back."

"how'd you do it?" Sans asked, lowering himself down to sit cross-legged as he waited for an answer. Alphys swallowed visibly and raised her hand to the glass one more. The Amalgamate behind it turned away, its posture stiff as it wrapped its limbs tightly around its body. Sans wondered if it was in pain.

"Sans. I, ahhh... d-don't mind telling you, or, or anything, and it isn't that I don't trust you, but... first, you have to promise that you won't t-tell anybody else. Please?"

 Sans tapped his bony fingers against his jawbone.  _Click-click, click-click_. The Amalgamate ground its fangs as it turned away from the two monsters, either mentally checked-out or trying very hard to ignore them both. Its arms were so tight against its torso that the skin was beginning to meld together.

"if you want this to stay secret, i don't have much of a reason to rat you out. unless there's, y'know. a reason."

"Th-that isn't a promise."

"nope," Sans said. And then left it at that. At least, he  _tried_ to.

"S-sans, please..."

"i already know enough to start jumping to conclusions. is the truth really worse than whatever i'm imagining right now?"

Alphys groaned and put her head in her hands. "Sans, can we just... not do this? P-Please? I'm only asking this of you in the first place b-because I want to keep Undyne safe..."

"whaddya mean, safe? safe from what?"

In life, Undyne had been the most widely-respected monster Sans ever met, except possibly for King Asgore himself. Nowadays it had to be even more of a toss-up, given how many monsters owed their continued existence to her for delaying the anomaly as long as she did. Sans couldn't imagine any one of them stumbling upon the Underground's heroine—weakened and sick, but somehow still alive—and immediately deciding to bump her off for a  _third_  time. Unlike other types of beings, monsters weren't huge fans of senseless killing.

Alphys didn't answer.

"if anything, having undyne back would make a lotta people real h—"

"N-NO!" Alphys cried out, lunging forward and clutching onto Sans' arm. The Amalgamate gurgled at them, though if that was supposed to be speech then Sans didn't understand a word. "Y-you can't tell them! You can't tell ANYONE th-that she's down here!"

 "alright alright, i won't." Sans said, trying to pull his arm away. After a few anxious moments, Alphys let him. "if nothing else, it isn't worth pissing off the only friend i got left."

Alphys sat back down, hugging her knees against her chest. "...S-sorry."

She leaned sideways against the side of the tank, gazing in at the Amalgamate-Undyne. Once it became clear that a fight wasn't about to happen after all, it lost interest and went back to staring into space. Alphys went back to staring at the Amalgamate.

"am i allowed to know how you pulled this off?"

". . ."

"alph?"

Alphys sighed and rubbed her temples. "All the DT I had left over from the f-first t-trials... I used it here, on this. On Undyne."

 Sans let that sink in. "...ah."

The other day, it had been the Whimsalot asking for help on behalf on their sibling, and a rabbit-monster from Snowdin trying to bring back their friend.

The day before, it was a pair of slime monsters whose father Fell Down.

"And dust. I, I used a tissue sample from Lemon Bread, for, you know, the physical base. But m-mostly I used dust."

Sans nodded slowly. Dust, Determination, and some Amalgamate goo, or something. That was all.

Before he could stop it, a small, desperate voice whispered from the back of his mind;  _Papyrus?_

Then the Amalgamate-Undyne shot off to the other corner of the tank, slamming so hard against the glass that even Sans flinched. Alphys leaped up and scuttled over in concern as Sans stomped the little feeling of hope back down into the dark, half-forgotten corner of his mind where it belonged.

Sans leaned back to crack his vertebrae before getting up. Alphys was up on her toes to try and reach her creation's eye-level, murmuring something along the general lines of  _shh/it's okay/calm down/please shut up and don't give yourself a concussion while there's company over_. Something like that. Seemingly unharmed by the impact, Amalgamate-Undyne ignored her efforts and retreated to the opposite side of the tank again, scrunching itself back into the corner. Alphys sighed and rested her cheek against the glass.

"can she... actually hear you in there?"

"M-maybe," Alphys said. "She doesn't like being in the tank very much, but... ahhh, I guess you could tell that. I don't like keeping her here either, b-but's the only thing that's been able to c-consistently keep her as stable a-as she's been."

Alphys' expression creased in guilt as she stepped away from the tank. The Amalgamate stayed where it was, showing no further interest in smacking its head against the glass. So there was that, at least. Alphys went and carefully picked the dress up from the counter as though it might break apart in her hands. Dust trickled down between her fingers, and her frown deepened. "Didn't this belong to that Whimsalot from the other day?"

"looks like it."

"...Oh," Alphys said softly. "I... I wonder if they're the one that let her out. I don't know if she can, by herself. But that doesn't explain how they got in, o-or what they were doing down here..."

"i'm guessin' they didn't believe you about the dt being gone," Sans said. There wasn't supposed to be any sort of accusation in the statement, really, but Alphys' expression fell into one of misery anyway. Maybe Sans was just being cynical, but he had a strong suspicion that it wasn't just pity for the dead monster.

"And you sure th-they're really...?"

"yeah. i'm sure." The implication that Sans didn't know what dust looked like was probably mildly insulting, but caring about things took effort, effort that would be better-spent elsewhere.

The Amalgamate lay flat against the bottom of its tank, arms still loosely wrapped around its belly. Sans entered its line of sight, but it just turned away to stare at the wall instead. Across the room, Alphys folded the dusty dress in half over her arm and set it carefully back down on the counter before wiping her hands on her skirt. Stained as it was, they only ended up getting dirtier in the process.

"I should go and, um, g-get them, then. And I'll need to get the elevator working too, as well," Alphys said with a brittle sort of calm. "Could you... maybe... j-just watch Undyne for a few minutes?"

 

She didn't actually wait long enough for Sans to answer, the door hissing open and shut behind her as she all but fled the room and left him alone. Sort of.

Without the sound of their voices as a distraction, the low, droning hum of the tank's filter was a constant presence, and weirdly soothing in a way. Like one of those white-noise machines that were supposed to help you sleep, not that Sans ever needed such a thing. He sat back down on the floor, resting his chin in his hands. Caring about things you couldn't change was a pointless waste of effort, especially these days. Even so, that whispering voice in the back of his mind just wouldn't shut up.

_Dust. You have the dust. Determination. You could get your hands on that._

Maybe he could. Maybe he could do exactly what Alphys had done, and what all those other monsters probably would do if they could. But for what?

Sans rapped his knuckles against the side of the tank. The Amalgamate raised its head and squinted up at him.  The look on its face wasn't exactly friendly so far as he could tell, but then, Undyne never did like him much. Oh, she tolerated him for Papyrus' sake, and she didn't fire him from his position as a sentry, but that was about as far as her love for the lazy skeleton went.

He felt a tinge of something that was definitely  _not_ guilt.

He'd done nothing wrong. And nothing he could have done would've changed what happened to her, either.

"heya."

Amalgamate-Undyne huffed, or did something like it—he could see its chest move. Then it curled up tighter in place, still watching. More on an impulse than anything, Sans signed to it,  _YOU HURT?_ and waited. Then he repeated the question more slowly, holding the last sign for a minute. There was no hint of recognition in the Amalgamate's eye, which was what he should've expected. Then the Amalgamate pushed off from the bottom of the tank and hovered in place as close to the door as it could reach. It looked questioningly to the door, then Sans, mouthing a word that he couldn't make out.

"sorry, uh, didn't catch that."

The Amalgamate banged its arms against the inside of its tank, gurgling at him. Its tail flicked around as it moved back and forth, pushing at the glass again as though hoping to find a way through. He almost would have guessed it was upset about Alphys leaving, but it had wanted nothing to do with her just a few minutes ago, so he wasn't so confident in that explanation. 

"i can't letcha out just yet. but alph will be back soon, ok? so just... relax."

Amalgamate-Undyne, characteristically, did pretty much the opposite of relaxing. But at least she un-relaxed _inside_ the tank, where she belonged. According to Alphys.

Sans shoved his hands back into his pockets, shifting around uncomfortably as he waited for her to return.

* * *

ENTRY NUMBER 14:

* Undyne hasn't gained consciousness yet, but the process is going well so far.  
* She doesn't look very much like "herself" yet, either, but hopefully that will also change.  
* I plan to stay here for the rest of the night and monitor how she's doing.  
* Even if it wasn't necessary, I would want to do that anyway.  
* She's alive again.  
* She's alive again she's alive again she's alive again!!!! ♥♥♥

* * *

Alphys sat back on her heels and grimaced, uselessly wiping her grimy hand off on her robe. Sans was right about what he'd discovered—the elevator doors were just far enough apart for her to reach inside, feeling around until her fingers brushed against cool metal and a a thin layer of something gritty all along the floor inside the cab. The metal, so far as she could tell, was the little dented knight's helmet the Whimsalot had worn. The dust... well, it was dust.

The young queen hung her head.

She hadn't known the little moth-monster personally, and as much as she hated herself for it, she  _still_ couldn't remember their name. And now she might never know, just as she would probably never know just what they had been thinking when they broke in here, or precisely what had happened.

The electrical wiring down here was old, the lab was old—the elevators were old. Maybe when they broke in, they'd triggered some catastrophic mechanical failure that got them killed.

Or maybe they really did let Undyne out of her tank, and she... no. No matter what state she was in, Undyne would never harm another monster like that. Never.

Maybe it was someone else.

The thought of that made Alphys shiver despite her uncomfortably thick clothing. A monster was dead because she'd said she couldn't help them, and they'd refused to just accept that. And she  _couldn't_ help them, that part was true enough, but...

"What d-did you think you were doing?" Alphys mumbled. "I t-told you..."

She slumped her shoulders, kneeling in the silent room among the dust and broken glass.

 

Then she rose to her feet and went to find a jar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Gets praised for focusing on characters aside from the skelebros._   
>  _Immediately follows up with a chapter almost exclusively from Sans' perspective._
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> In my defense, this was originally going to be part of the previous chapter before it got too long, lol.


	6. Compassion

ENTRY NUMBER 21:

* The others woke up and seemed fine for a while before they melted.  
* Knowing this, I should have expected Undyne to crash at some point.  
* The good news is that she's been stable for hours now, though she's also really stressed and confused.  
* ...Understandably.  
* I'll move her back out of the tank as soon as possible, but only once it's completely safe.  
* There isn't enough "determination" left for this to happen a second time.

* * *

Alphys and Sans sat across from each other on the floor, the dust jar in between them.

Sans rested the side of his skull on one hand, eyes half-shut as though he was about to fall asleep at any moment. Alphys would have been annoyed, but she could  _feel_ him watching her so intently that her scaly skin crawled. She sat with her back pressed against the tank to keep Undyne calm with her presence—that was the explanation she'd give Sans if he asked for some reason, anyway.

By the time she'd gotten the elevator running and retrieved the dust from inside, Undyne was in a full-blown panic and Sans was doing nothing except standing around, more visibly uncomfortable than Alphys had ever seen him. She would've either teased him for that or scolded him for doing nothing to calm Undyne, but joking around while holding a jar of some other monster's remains would be more characteristic of Sans than herself. And getting outwardly angry at him would be too much of a risk, until she was completely sure that he didn't intend to tell anybody what he had seen down here.

Undyne had ceased attacking the glass and settled down immediately upon seeing Alphys, which was a little flattering. But then she went right back to staying as far from her as possible within the confines of the tank, which wasn't.

"just to put it out there now... i'm not telling their family for you."

"Of course. I wouldn't ask that of you, Sans." Alphys picked at the little half-moon of dust and dried goop from under her claw, secretly grateful that she'd been too anxious to go any further than dropping hints so far. "Though I don't necessarily know if, um..."

"yeah?"

Alphys wiped her hands compulsively against her skirt. "Well, who is there for me to tell, anyway? They said that their whole family was gone, except for Reaper Bird and the sibling that Fell Down."

"so, just reaper bird, then. and their friends—whoever's gonna miss them. my point still stands," Sans said, then paused for a beat. "what are you gonna do about the sibling, anyways? from the sound of things, cabbage was the only one taking care of 'em."

The question left Alphys confused, until she figured out that  _that_ must have been the dead monster's name. Cabbage. She still didn't remember much of anything before their deeply uncomfortable conversation a few days earlier, as shameful as that was. Surely they'd met at least in passing during the evacuation, but the hours after Undyne's death were all a blur.

"I don't know," she admitted. "I suppose I should check in on them just to be sure, b-but... I wasn't lying when I said that I couldn't help them. There isn't any more Determination."

Sans slowly tilted his skull to one side, a gesture roughly equivalent to raising eyebrows he didn't actually possess. Alphys pressed herself back against the tank. "W-well, w-what I mean is that... t-technically there's still a little left, but... not enough to help someone who's Fallen Down. And besides, Undyne needs it. It's... it's what I've been using to help her. So she can get better."

"how much?"

"Almost n-none. Really. And I only s-started out with a little to begin with. ...J-just a few vials," Alphys said.

Sans hummed. "not sure i'd call that a 'little'. but, uh, you're the expert here." Despite the offhand reassurance, he was still looking at her like she'd said something unbelievably stupid—that was what it felt like, at least. His face hardly moved, and without much in the way of expressions to indicate what he was thinking, there were plenty of blank spaces for her anxious mind to fill in with all the worst possible options. Maybe he truly only meant what he'd said, but it was _much_  more likely that he secretly thought she was stupid or crazy or both.

"S-still. Even in ideal conditions, th-that wouldn't be enough to help everyone that's Fallen Down since... th-then. Only a few people, at the very most. S-so I, ah... um..."

"used it all on her instead?"

Alphys gave up on any semblance of proper queenly posture and hunched her shoulders, wrapping her tail around herself. "N-not ALL of it. Just... w-w-well... a lot. And maybe you think it was wrong to do so, and... m-maybe you're right, but it's impossible to change the past. So now, in the present... shouldn't I do what I can to help the one person who can b-benefit?"

Sans said nothing to that. At this moment more than ever, Alphys wished desperately that Undyne was still—still  _healthy_. She would know the right thing to do, and the right thing to say. She wouldn't screw up like Alphys always did. She knew how to  _lead_ , and as difficult as it was to envision her boisterous friend wearing a crown or quietly sitting in meetings about construction and food production, Undyne could have adjusted to being a monarch. Unlike Alphys.

The back of her robe stuck to her sweaty scales where it pressed against the glass. "...I'm s-sorry, Sans."

Sans scrunched his eyes in what she interpreted as a questioning look.

"Under the circumstances, I understand if... if y-you're angry at me for keeping Undyne a secret. Or angry that I didn't do anything for... um. Y-you know."

In the handful of times she'd foolishly tried to directly mention Sans' brother, he'd always changed the subject or found some excuse to immediately leave. For a moment, she wondered if he would do so once again. Instead Sans looked past Alphys and into the tank, at what remained of her dearest friend. The small pinpoints of light in his dark eye sockets didn't look so different from Undyne's, now. Then he let out something between a huff and a weak laugh, the sound hollow as it rattled through his skull. "i get what you're saying, but he's... better off where he is now."

"...Oh."

Alphys looked down at her lap.

Sans had just forgiven her, to the extent that it was his place to do so, but his answer was somehow worse than an angry response.

She reached out and brushed her claws against the top of the dust jar. "You aren't going to tell anybody, right?"

The skeleton considered her question long enough to make Alphys terribly uncomfortable, but finally shook his head. "considering what happened last time around, i can't tell ya that i think covering any of this up is a great idea. but i can't force you to do anything, and there's nothing to be gained from trying. so... nah."

Alphys allowed herself to relax just the slightest bit, carefully scooping up the dust jar before standing up.

"that being said, is she... uh... is undyne ok in there?"

A laugh, even the unhappy kind, wasn't the sort of response Sans was probably expecting, but it was the one he got.

"Wh-what do you think, Sans?" 

"alright, fair enough," he said, picking up the folded dress and little helmet that had belonged to the dead moth-monster. "it just seemed like she's..."

Sans stopped again, then shook his head, waving his free hand at Alphys before returning it to its usual spot in his pocket. "...know what, forget it."

Maybe it was cowardly, in a way, but Alphys was perfectly happy to let the subject drop.

* * *

ENTRY NUMBER 07:

* Even after so long, it's hard to accept that this is all real.  
* It feels like a bad dream I'll wake up from at any moment, and find that the world is back to normal.  
* Call it wishful thinking, I suppose.  
* Maybe other people feel the same way too, but it's such a strange question to ask.  
* As the queen, I'd better just keep these things to myself.

* * *

The Amalgamate swam back and forth in a loose figure-eight shape along the back wall of the tank, glancing up periodically to keep an eye on Alphys. She was  _still_ sitting and talking to that other monster, and the reassurance of having her safely nearby did little to alleviate the creature's restlessness.

Though the memory was hazy now, there had been a chirpy yellow thing outside of the tank, a small being whose sweetly childish voice didn't at all fit the terrible things it promised the creature. Directly interacting with Alphys held just as little appeal as ever, but the encounter only reinforced its concern for her safety. The Amalgamate didn't understand exactly why she was so important, but the thought of Alphys coming to harm was completely intolerable. Even when she caused it pain for no apparent reason, or carried it back to the tank after it finally found a way to escape, it would not hurt her. And likewise, nothing else was allow to hurt her, either.

Unfortunately, Alphys herself didn't seem to understand any of this: she'd brought the Amalgamate back to the tank and left it there, leaving behind both it and the strange blue-and-white monster who'd followed them into the room. By now the creature had judged them to be little threat, but the little yellow creature  _was_ , and yet Alphys left anyway. The Amalgamate had tried to make her companion understand this, but they did nothing except stand around and gesture a few times.

The pair was standing up now, and the Amalgamate paused its swimming to watch them both. Alphys held a jar of something gray in her arms as she turned to face the tank, which made it nervous, but she gave the creature a timid smile without making any attempt to move closer. The look on her face filled the Amalgamate with an uneasy feeling that wasn't exactly fear, but wasn't pleasant either.

 Uncomfortable and uncertain of what to do, the Amalgamate turned away to face the wall, returning to its swimming. More and more often it found itself confronted with this strange feeling of emptiness, which worsened every time it looked at Alphys. Even beyond the physical pain and confinement it had come to associate with her, something about the small, soft little monster didn't feel right. But then, nothing felt quite right anymore.

Leaving the tank might have damaged the Amalgamate's body even further than it already was, but it also burned away much of the mental fog that had kept the creature in a daze for so long. Although that renewed clarity was already starting to wear off a little, the Amalgamate sensed that there was something profoundly wrong with itself, something which was only vaguely related to its physical condition. Its body worked, more or less, and in any case the Amalgamate didn't remember its old body well enough to miss it. But there was something else too, something deeper and infinitely more important, which was simply—

. . .Gone.

The constant bubbling-humming noise in the water grew in intensity, and within moments the tank's interior turned a little clearer, thin swirls of grayish powder dissipating from around the Amalgamate. This happened on and off, at times, as well as near the end of Alphys' visits. Unfazed, the Amalgamate swam around a few more times before the pieces came together, and it came to an abrupt stop. It swam anxiously towards the room's door until it bumped against the glass, then swam along the side, then darted upward. It had expected the open air to hurt its face again, but it burned all over now and the water didn't make much of a difference anyway. The Amalgamate blinked away a few droplets, but the room was devoid of any other sign of life.

The creature bubbled to itself in frustration. Alphys wasn't alone, so she _might_ be all right, but it had little faith in that blue-and-white monster at her side.

It swam off to the other side of the tank, where Alphys had been. Then it swam back to the opposite corner. And then across the tank once again. And again. And again.

\---

After the Amalgamate's short brush with freedom, the days that followed seemed to drag on into eternity. 

The steel mesh that had originally covered the tank was long gone, replaced by two layers of a kind of fine metal screen that was much more difficult to grab onto. The Amalgamate might still be able to force its way through, just as it did the first time, but it didn't feel quite so motivated to try anymore. Regaining its usual physical shape didn't take much effort upon returning to the tank, but the cool water no longer provided any relief from the Amalgamate's constant burning feeling. It felt less like physical pain and more like an adrenaline rush or fiery rage, impossible to ignore or extinguish with any amount of water.

The Amalgamate didn't have any idea how long it had been swimming, though whether that was the result of its questionable mental state or the sheer mind-numbing boredom of being trapped in a small space with nothing to do, one couldn't say. Swimming wasn't much of a distraction, but the only alternative was hitting things, and its tank was almost entirely empty. And attacking the glass usually made Alphys upset.

A flicker of motion caught its attention, but a quick glance told the Amalgamate that it was the blue-and-white monster again, not Alphys. It looked away and swished its tail, swimming faster.

Alphys would have gotten pretty much the same treatment, of course, but at least she would have been a reassuring sight. While Alphys had originally been the Amalgamate's only source of company, the other monster had begun to replace her now and again; there was one day in which she didn't appear at all. And although they always reassured the Amalgamate that Alphys was fine whenever it managed to ask, if it couldn't see her then it didn't  _know_.

Otherwise, the blue-and-white monster was a mildly annoying but inoffensive presence. They often brought food, usually left the Amalgamate alone, and never tried to inject it with anything. Alphys hadn't done that either for some time now, but there were some things that could not be forgotten.

The Amalgamate swam in tight circles around the tank while the blue-and-white monster went over to sit in its usual spot on the other side of the room.

Water swirled around the Amalgamate as it swam faster and faster, but even that still wasn’t enough. It wanted to move around, and actually end up somewhere else. It wanted to _fight_. It sped up until it inevitably misjudged the distance from the glass and slammed full force against it, vision going momentarily dark before its eye repaired itself. The impact barely fazed it anymore. Swishing its tail to right itself, the Amalgamate growled and lashed out with its limbs, then its whole body, ramming against the glass with its shoulder. It remained an impenetrable barrier, and distantly the Amalgamate sensed that hitting the glass hurt, just as its face had hurt for an instant. But its body was too amorphous to be damaged, only reshaped, so physical pain didn’t mean much of anything.

After a few more repetitions of this, the blue-white monster got up from their chair and approached. They were small, even smaller than Alphys, and by the time they were about a foot or so away, their features were easier to make out. They had large dark holes in place of eyes, a blue jacket that was a little too large for them, and a rounded face the same pale color as the Amalgamate itself.

If the Amalgamate tried, it could almost remember the name that went with that face.

Instead it flipped itself over and floated belly-up, blinking at the almost-familiar monster from this new angle. They tilted their head, raising both hands and tapping two of their fingers together in front of their forehead. There was something hazily familiar about the motion; if the Amalgamate hadn’t seen it before, then it at least recalled seeing gestures like it. The memories were there somewhere, but not important enough to try and piece together.

“Alph…ys?” it asked, but the monster just motioned again (differently this time) and didn’t give an answer. The Amalgamate hissed and moved to swim away, then didn’t. Even if this monster wasn’t Alphys and never gave a satisfying answer to anything it tried to say, interacting with another being was still an improvement over banging its head against the glass. Sometimes.

. . .Sans. That was his name. Sans.

The Amalgamate flipped back over to face the smaller being properly. It was fairly certain that his name was Sans. It said the name aloud, but he still didn't respond to that even though he was standing so close to the tank.

“Sans. Kn…ow… you…” it repeated insistently, but he didn’t answer. Or if he did then the Amalgamate couldn’t tell, the grin on his face not budging for an instant. As though he thought something was very, very funny, all the time, but he wouldn't explain why.

The Amalgamate swam higher up until Sans had to crane his head back to keep looking at it, then poked its head out of the water. Unlike Alphys, he didn’t seem to care too much if it went near the mesh.

“hey, undyne,” he said to the creature. It stared blankly back at him before sliding back down into the water, feeling a bit strange for reasons it couldn't exactly pin down.

Then without warning it flicked its tail in his direction, hard, splashing water through the steel mesh and all along the floor. Sans jumped in surprise and side-stepped out of the way just in time to avoid getting soaked, but the pink slippers on his feet weren’t so lucky. He looked down at them and didn’t say anything that the Amalgamate could hear, though it thought it saw his shoulders shake once or twice. The Amalgamate wanted to splash him again, but now he was too far away and didn’t come back into range even when it waited. With a burble, it turned away from Sans and went back to swimming in circles.

The burning feeling did not change, and Alphys still wasn’t here, but the Amalgamate took its distractions where it could get them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short chapter, I'm afraid, and it still took a while to write. But it's the best I can do given my limited free time these days. In other news, the chapter naming scheme worked a whole lot better when this story was going to be two or three chapters at the most, but it's probably too late to change that now lol lol lol.
> 
> On the plus side, as slow-paced as this mess of a story has been so far, we're still shambling steadily towards... things. =)


	7. With That Power

~~ENTRY NUMBER -999:~~

~~* THE EXPERIMENT WILL BE TERMINATED.~~  
~~* WHILE MY ORIGINAL FINDINGS HELD PROMISE, THE SUBJECT'S SOUL REMAINS ABNORMALLY FRAIL EVEN BY MONSTER STANDARDS.~~  
~~* THIS IS DISAPPOINTING, OF COURSE, BUT I CANNOT IN GOOD CONSCIENCE CARRY OUT THE EXPERIMENT TO ITS PLANNED CONCLUSION.~~  
~~* ONLY TIME WILL TELL IF THE SUBJECT'S CONDITION WILL DETERIORATE, REGARDLESS OF ITS PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OR MY OWN INTERVENTION.~~  
~~* BUT UNTIL THAT DAY COMES...~~

* * *

Alphys had been something of a recluse as the royal scientist, unable to endure the unsettling feeling that the monsters around here were all watching her every move, laughing at her inside,  _judging_ her. Waterfall was okay with Undyne at her side, and once in a rare while Sans managed to drag her to Grillby's but for the most part she'd felt safer observing the Underground from the safety of her monitor screen.

She didn't feel any more confident these days, but she could walk through the Capital wearing a robe and crown without having an anxiety attack and trying to hide behind a dumpster, so that had to mean something.

Alphys checked the house number listed in her phone for about the seventeenth time, just to be absolutely sure she wasn't about to seriously alarm the wrong random strangers, before raising her hand to knock on the door. As she waited, she couldn't help but hope that nobody was home. The guilt of seeing that lonely little jar of dust on her shelf had weighed heavily on her conscience, and Sans' gentle prodding at her to deal with it "before this comes back to bite ya" finally drove her to action. But she certainly wouldn't turn down a legitimate excuse to flee if it presented itself. The past few days had already been stressful enough.

In her frantic dash over to the lab, she'd entirely forgotten about the half-dozen people she'd agreed to meet with that afternoon. The monsters she'd spoken to so far sounded (understandably) annoyed, and it didn't help that she couldn't explain why she'd disappeared, or why she didn't answer her phone when they'd called. Alphys never answered her phone when she was the royal scientist either, but she tried not to do that anymore. Sudden disappearances unanswered phone calls made people incredibly nervous these days.

Speaking of which: nobody seemed to be answering the door. Alphys fidgeted with the straps to the bag over her shoulder and knocked on the door again exactly once. One more minute, and then she'd give up and go home. Maybe a little less. That was a reasonable amount of time to wait around, right?

Except that all she could think was: _four days_.

Four days had passed, and nobody came looking for them—not to Alphys, at least. There'd been a call from one parent frantically asking her to look through her camera footage for their lost child, which turned out to be a teenager who'd just stayed out too late and forgot to bring their phone, but she'd heard nothing about the Whimsalot. She knew that their family was all but wiped out, but surely they had friends? If a anime-loving recluse with a basement full of undead monsters and no self-esteem could make friends, surely they could too. If nothing else, there were the other monsters that lived with them. While Alphys kept in closer contact with some than others, she knew hat most of the Amalgamates' families had either moved in with each other or at least made a point of living in close proximity. It was the simplest way to go about sharing custody of their now-combined loved ones, though she suspected that loneliness played a big role as well. The dead Whimsalot wasn't the only one who'd lost nearly everyone.

Alphys' morbid train of thought was knocked off its track as the front door swung open and nearly smacked her in the nose. The delay in response was explained pretty quickly as she saw the Froggit dangling from the other side of the door with its jaws clamped around the door handle. That... didn't seem very efficient. Or sanitary. But Alphys wasn't here to talk about that, so she just waited patiently until the Froggit plopped back down and meowed at her.

"Ahh, hello there. I hope this isn't an inconvenient time, b-but, ah, does someone named Cabbage live here? They're a Whimsalot?"

The frog-monster pondered her question for what seemed like an inordinate amount of tie, given that the only logical answers were  _yes_ ,  _no_ , or possibly  _get out of my house_. Since they hadn't yet gone with the last option, Alphys inched forward so that she at least wasn't awkwardly standing around on their front step. The moment she crossed the threshold, the Froggit let out a piercing  _RIBBET!_ and bounded off down the hall.

"Um. O-okay?"

She was beginning to wonder if that was an "okay, wait right here" _ribbet_ or an "oh god there's a crazy lizard girl invading my house, help" _ribbet_ when two more monsters could be heard approaching, their footsteps punctuated by the  _pat-plop-pat_ of the Froggit's hopping feet. Alphys' newfound confidence in the face of—well—people's faces was rather brutally tested a moment later, as a pair of Loox waddled into the front room with the Froggit at their heels. She assumed it was the same Froggit, at least.

Alphys tried to smile politely, but the two Loox (Looxes? Looxi?) gave each other sidelong looks that might have been subtle if their eyeballs didn't take up about 75% of their total body mass. Finally, one shoved the other forward, and the unlucky Loox finally answered her.

"Cabbage isn't here."

"I seen," Alphys said, playing with her bag's shoulder-strap. "W-well actually, um... that's what I came here to discuss. Were— or, ah, are... either of y-you, ah, friends with them?"

The Loox in front turned back to their companion, receiving a shrug in response.

"They pick on the Froggits," the first Loox said. Alphys couldn't tell if that was meant as a positive or not, but the Froggit let out an anxious  _ribbet_ and hopped back out of the room.

"Why?" the other Loox asked, squinting up at Alphys. "Something happened to them?"

She swallowed hard and nodded. No, she wasn't anxious, and she definitely didn't feel like she was going to barf. Not in the least. Definitely. Totally. But her throat felt undeniably tight, and she found that she had to repeat her first words to get them out in something louder than a whisper. "Y-yes, there was an— there was an accident in the lab. They tried to get in, and... w-well, I wasn't there, but they, um... fell."

The two Loox went on doing what they did best, and Alphys silently cursed Sans for convincing her that this was a good idea. Sure, avoiding difficult conversations had led her to a very dark place in the past, and ruined literally dozens of people's lives, but it was  _easy_. She couldn't do that anymore, though, she reminded herself. She was the queen. Above anything else, she was supposed to know what she was doing, or at least look like she did, even if that was just another form of lying.

"...Oh," said one Loox.

"Jeez," said the other. There was another  _ribbet_ from elsewhere in the house, which didn't seem to be especially large. The two Loox blinked thoughtfully.

"'Cuz won't be very happy about this."

"What should we..?"

"Are you t-talking about Reaper Bird?" Alphys asked. She wasn't sure what sort of reaction she'd been expecting or hoping for, but it wasn't exactly this. It was a relief that nobody was yelling at her or crying or something, but...

"Yup," the first Loox answered, then went on to explain: "They've been acting up. We figured it was because of the other one. The Whimsun."

"That's also partially why I came here. I heard that their—that Cabbage's sibling Fell Down, and I wasn't sure if... um, well, it seemed best if I checked on them. If you, ahh, don't mind, that is."

The two smaller monsters looked at each other for a minute, then shrugged.

 

 

They remained in the doorway as Alphys entered the bedroom. There wasn't much of anyhing inside except for a small dresser and a similarly-sized bed, but the room still felt cramped. Alphys wasn't so used to spending time in houses built for monsters smaller than herself. Maybe this was what Asgore always felt like.

The Whimsun looked no different than the other monsters that were once Alphys patients; its eyes were closed, and its tiny hands lay limp on top of the bedsheet. Had it been human, the only sign that it was alive at all would have been that— the faint rise and fall of its chest underneath that sheet. Alphys frowned as she approached the bedside. All monsters understood what Falling Down meant on a basic, almost instinctive level, but she was more acquainted with the condition than most. And it was clear to her that this monster would not survive for much longer. Whimsuns were small and delicate of build, but there was a slightly translucent quality to the monster's skin only natural to ghosts. It was a sign that the monster's SOUL was beginning to weaken, the magic which formed its body slowly failing.

She reached out to brush her finger against the tip of the creature's wing. Its delicate edge crumbled and broke away like a dry, wilted flower petal, the fragments shimmering faintly before turning to dust.

"Stwoheofopre cropiaickkinsg cmroyank thcsiaeblikmng.?"

What had appeared to be white-ish paint dripped down the wall before gathering itself into a vaguely avian shape; slowly enough, luckily, for Alphys to regain her composure and pretended that that hadn't just given her a mini-heart attack.

"O-oh! Hello there, ahh, R-Reaper Bird," she said brightly. That was how it was supposed to come out, at least. The Amalgamate trilled in response and poured off the foot of the bed, fluttering over to inspect her more closely. Then it moved back and settled down onto the bed, its amorphous body melting into the sheets by its sibling's feet. The Amalgamate softly mumbled to itself and ruffled its wings-which-were-really-legs, its combined voices impossible to decipher.

"They've been here for days. Hardly won't leave at all," one of the Loox said.

"I'm not surprised," Alphys murmured, clasping her hands behind her back and biting her lip. This didn't feel right at all. Even if the Loox and the Whimsuns (and Whimsalots and  _whoever_ ) didn't know each other very well, it seemed like they should sound more concerned than they did. Or maybe people were just too desensitized by death at this point. It was an ugly thought, but probably a correct one.

And why didn't  _she_ care, herself, until now? She did care, she thought she did, just... caring didn't mean there was anything you could do. Not really. Not without risking Undyne's wellbeing. Or her own reputation, if people knew where her real priorities lay. As soon as that thought crossed her mind, Alphys dug her claws into her wrist, filled with self-disgust.

The Whimsun breathed slowly, tiny and frail and in all probability completely doomed. Just like the rest. Just like its sibling. Alphys gripped her hands even more tightly together.

"This... doesn't look very good," she said, and it wouldn't occur to her until later that it was a stupidly obvious statement. "Unless there's a reason why you might not want me to, I think it would be a good idea if I, ah... m-maybe..."

"You're gonna help them?" asked one of the Loox. Reaper Bird tilted its head much further than it looked like it should have been able to, making a light bubbling sound.

"Rfiihelxbbept rluithbbemnaet?"

"Um. W-well, yes. Today, I think. Waiting much l-longer probably won't, um... be a very good idea." Both the Loox widened in surprise at that, but nodded. Reaper Bird went on bubble-trilling to itself.

"If you're helping them... I know someone whose boyfriend Fell Down. Can you help him too?"

Alphys mentally cursed Sans yet again, though she only had herself to blame for coming here. She knew it was a bad idea. She knew it.

"I'll... I'll have to see," she said, knowing full well that she would do no such thing.

\---

Alphys stood over the Whimsun's cot, the overhead lights flickering as she turned the glass vial over and over in her hands.

As carefully as she'd tried to ration it out, her supply of Determination was limited. She'd known it would have to run out eventually, and could only hope that Undyne would reach a stable physical state before that time came. It hadn't, yet. Technically. But the amount remaining in the vial Alphys now held was less than half of her normal dose. She'd planned to give it to Undyne just as a matter of course, but it seemed her plan had changed.

 Though Alphys was pessimistic about how much good this little vial could do, it might be enough to save a monster as tiny and frail as a Whimsun.

Alphys went and set the vial down on the counter. The glass felt unnaturally warm, as though the glowing liquid within was alive, and it certainly didn't help that her hands were getting all hot and sweaty underneath the disposable gloves.

Out came a box of syringes. Funny, how a human invention could end up being used for something like this.

Next step: fill the syringe with Determination. Then inject.

She reached for the Determination vial, fingers curling around the glass tube. It clicked once, then twice against the countertop, before she set it back down and peeled off her gloves. She walked back over to the sink and washed them again.

From a purely logical standpoint, the situation was clear even to a scientist as hopelessly inept as Alphys. If the remaining amount of Determination was unlikely to make a difference in Undyne's condition one way or another, then Alphys should use this limited resource on someone who could benefit. Someone who could survive,  _if_ she acted right now. Alphys owed it to their sibling, if nothing else.

But what if she was wrong, and they couldn't be saved? What if she was overoptimistic about her friend's condition, and she started to relapse again, and she couldn't even try to save her because she'd already wasted this last little vial? Alphys wasn't purely logical, or even _mostly_ logical, and the thought of leaving Undyne's fate up to chance and guesswork left her feeling sick. Maybe that strange phone call was right, and she was playing god. But Alphys was only continuing what Undyne herself had started. She'd used Determination to bring  _herself_ back first, in defiance to everything Alphys knew about monsters—in defiance to the human—to death itself. And then lost.

So Alphys used the Determination  _she_ possessed in order to undo that terrible injustice. Undyne shouldn't have died. It wasn't supposed to end like that.  _She_ wasn't supposed to end like that. So if Alphys did anything to jeopardize her own efforts to right such a terrible wrong, then... that would be wrong too, wouldn't it? 

No doubt Sans would have something to say about that kind of argument. But as helpful as he could be, he didn't know everything.

Alphys shoved the unused syringe back into the drawer and returned the Determination vial to her inventory. Turning to the Whimsun, she rechecked the SOUL monitor hooked up to the tiny monster's chest. Despite its almost ghostly appearance, the moth-monster's condition wasn't  _quite_ as dire as it looked—relatively speaking. At the very least, she had a few more hours before this decision would be made for her.

 

As for their sibling's dust jar, she had more time to consider. It wasn't going anywhere.

* * *

 

ENTRY NUMBER ???: *(The page is covered in scrawling doodles.)   
*(They look like things a child would draw.)   
*(Stars, hearts, squiggly shapes, rainbows. . .)   
*(. . .And a dog?)

* * *

 

 

"Howdy , fishie!" Flowey sing-songed, tapping at the side of the tank with a single long vine.   
The fish raised its head at the sound, then went back to staring at nothing with barely any acknowledgment of Flowey's presence. He struck the glass even harder, but the Amalgamate didn't respond. That was weird. After their little chat a few days earlier, the Amagamate always went completely berserk as soon as it saw him, screeching (or trying to) and bashing itself against the glass over and over in the most hilariously pitiful way . Actively trying to tease or provoke it were typically just icing on the cake, though of course he usually did both.

He summoned a single glowing "Friendliness Pellet" and aimed it at the glass. _PING!_

The Amalgamate jerked and looked his way , eye narrowed in what he imagined to be annoyance. Then its face went blank again; the Amalgamate lowered its head and curled itself up even tighter than before, clutching its head. Flowey huffed and turned his attention elsewhere, flipping through Alphys' clipboard of notes and skimming though them for anything interesting. The notes themselves were pretty boring, mostly just a bunch of numbers and rambling comments about this and that, but he did find a really cool glittery pink gel pen on the counter. After fumbling around a bit to get the cap off—his vines were pretty lacking in the "fine motor skills" department—he began to doodle all over the most recent page.

It wasn't much of a surprise that the fish would start acting all depressed, Flowey figured. He'd rather be set on fire than end up trapped somewhere alone with only Doctor Alphys and the smiley trashbag for company , personally.

Getting the trashbag involved was not part of Flowey's original plan. If he wanted to see Alphys' latest experiment come to its full stupid fruition, getting rid of the Whimsalot was the safest possible option. And of course he needed to get Alphys back down here too, before her girlfriend met the usual fate of pet fish who'd jumped out of their tanks. But there were ways to accomplish that without using the elevator; once it was broken, Alphys wouldn't have been able to get into the lab without help...

It was the kind of thoughtless slip-up a quick RELOAD could easily fix, but Chara held that power now. Until they came back, he'd just have to be a little more careful.

Flowey hummed to himself. Rainbows were a little hard to draw with only one color, but he'd just about figured it out when he heard a cracked and broken whisper, almost impossible to make out over the sound of the tank's filter. "O...u...t..."

Flowey set the clipboard back down. "Huh?"

The Amalgamate floated at the top of its tank, its head just far enough out of the water for it to speak. Its hands (or what remained of them) rested against the glass, but it didn't seem to be trying to escape. Or doing anything, really.

"O...u...t..."

"Oh," Flowey said, rolling his eyes. "You remember what happened LAST time, right? You'd just melt again, stupid."

It shook its head. "...Out." What a meaningful conversation! Or maybe not. Flowey reached for the clipboard and pen once more. It would be funny to write a creepy hidden message somewhere Alphys wouldn't find for days and days, but he probably wouldn't get to see her reaction to it, and that was half the fun.

"All... o...f... us..." the Amalgamate whispered dejectedly.

Flowey scrunched up his face at that. "What are you talking about?" he asked. Not that it was anything out of the ordinary for Amalgamates to babble about total nonsense, but it sounded so _sad_.

The Amalgamate didn't answer, slipping back underwater and closing its eye. And just like last time, it didn't respond even when he flung a Friendliness Pellet or two or five at the glass, which had to be really loud and obnoxious from inside of the tank.

"Sheesh. Okay, idiot," Flowey muttered as he tossed the clipboard aside. Then he shut up, eyes going big. Alphys and Sans usually didn't come down to the lab at around this time, so he hadn't bothered to check, but he could here clawed footsteps tapping their way down the hallway just a short way off. And from the sound of things, they were coming closer and closer to the— _DOOR_ —

Flowey ducked out of sight just as the door slid open, cursing his bad timing. He really , really needed to be more careful from now on, or life was going to be horribly annoying until Chara came back.  
  
He was still keeping the gel pen, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I'll go through and change the chapter titles (including this one) after all, because I'm really not very happy with them. And the optimal time to act upon that feeling is _definitely_ after reaching chapter seven.
> 
> 2/30/18 UPDATE: Though it doesn't technically happen yet, this chapter sets up a pretty huge continuity error that I'm going to go back and work out, once I decide on the best way to do so.
> 
> Whoops.


	8. Just a Bad Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quick heads-up: one scene in this chapter includes a description of a dead kid's remains. It isn't gratuitously detailed or anything, but feel free to skip past the second italicized section if you don't want to see it. The rest of the chapter will still make as much sense as it was ever going to.

ENTRY NUMBER 28:

* From a medical standpoint, I've been treating Undyne as an Amalgamate.  
* A small portion of her physical matter came from one, so I suppose it isn't entirely inaccurate.  
* But a slower rate of "determination" infusion should be much easier on her system, giving her a chance at a different outcome from theirs.  
* None of them seem to be in physical pain, so the alternative wouldn't be terrible, but. . .  
* whether I fully succeed or not, I still have no idea what to tell everyone.

* * *

_"Are you nervous?" Alphys asked._

_Undyne shook her head, still a little sweaty from the wild sprint down to the base of Mt. Ebott. She and Papyrus kept egging each other on, as usual, and she just couldn't help it! But as Asgore gently reminded them, monsterkind and humankind were about to meet again for the first time in centuries. Even with their young ambassador present to vouch for their goodwill, the sight of a skeleton and heavily muscled fish woman cackling and screaming their way across the surface world might make the wrong first impression._

_There was a reason she'd already slowed down enough for Asgore to get a word in, though._

_"Nervous? Hell no," Undyne said, reaching down to lace Alphys' fingers in between her own. Toriel instantly shot Undyne a glare from over her shoulder, the kind that could scorch the fur off a dog's back. Undyne was neither a dog nor a mind-reader, but she got the message clearly enough: how DARE she curse ~~in front of~~ while walking slightly behind a child?!_

_Oh, she'd dare all right. Undyne raised her hand along with Alphys' in a little wave, pretending to be completely oblivious as she grinned back. Asgore was too nice to hold a grudge against his ex for the way she acted towards him—right before making all buddy-buddy with Sans, no less— but that was Asgore for you. Until he explicitly told Undyne to do otherwise, she was going to be as petty as she wanted._

_"...Why, are you?" Undyne asked, once the old goat-woman_ hmpph _-ed_ _and turned away._

_Alphys nodded, red-faced and possibly a little confused by the exchange that just took place. "Yeah. It feels so open out here. K-kind of really... exposed?"_

_"Yeah, I know what you mean." Undyne never saw the confinement of the Underground as anything except what it was. Imprisonment. But after a lifetime spent under cavern ceilings, the open sky left Undyne with a weird lurching feeling in her belly. Like she'd drop right off the ground and fall in if she stared too long, somehow. The landscape wasn't helping much either, even after reaching the treeline; the pines around the mountain's base dwarfed even the trees in Snowdin woods. She'd seen plenty of similar locations in Alphys'  manga, of course, but that just made the area around them feel even less real. In retrospect._

_Okay. Maybe she was just the tiniest bit nervous, and more than a tiny bit disappointed about the whole anime-not-being-real thing, but she_ definitely _wasn't going to admit to feeling scared._

  _Papyrus strode along at Toriel and the human's side, his dozing brother (SERIOUSLY?!) slung over his back. Her friend was humming a song that, to Undyne's shame, she recognized as the theme to Mettaton's obnoxious TV show._

_"And, and I guess I'm a bit worried that... that... ...maybe they won't like us," Alphys added, quietly enough that the others wouldn't overhear._

_"Hey, c'mon," Undyne laughed as she bumped her hip again Alphys' shoulder. "We're GREAT. And I KNOW they're gonna like you. Why wouldn't they?"_

_Her smile faded as Alphys shook her head, voice smaller than before. "Not like that. I meant... w-well, there's Frisk, but what if..."_

_"What if the other humans aren't like them, you mean?" Undyne guessed, nodding towards the human child walking hand-in-hand with Toriel._

_"Y-yes."_

_Undyne considered this, stroking her thumb against the back of her friend's—her_ girlfriend _'s hand. She'd heard all kinds of stories about the old days from Gerson, and of course everyone knew how Asgore's children were murdered by humans. Humans that were, quite possibly, the direct ancestors of the ones this group would encounter in the very near future. There was also Alphys' anime—which couldn't be a COMPLETE lie, could it?—plus their new friend._ _In total, it didn't make for a very clear image of what humanity was really like._

_"Okay, the little punk IS pretty weird. But even if they're totally unlike all the others, they're not gonna risk hurting one of their own. Not if it's a kid. Besides, Asgore thinks everything will be different from the way it, uh, used to be."_

_Asgore could be too softhearted for his own good at times, too reluctant to fight even when it was necessary, but that was why he had Undyne to fight for him. If it came to that—and in light of the little punk's irredeemable wimpiness, she wasn't so sure it would. Either way, she was content to follow Asgore's directions for now._

_Alphys still looked worried, though._

_"I won't let anything happen to you, Alphy, no matter what we find out here. I promise." Undyne squeezed her hand. Of course, if the worst came to pass then Undyne would defend any monster with her life. Even Sans. That didn't sound nearly as romantic, though._

_"Okay?"_

_". . .O-okay."_

 

_Some kind of insects (which Undyne was mildly proud to recognize as cicadas) buzzed loudly in the trees as the group walked on— first Frisk and Toriel, then Papyrus with his brother (HOW WAS HE SLEEPING AT A TIME LIKE THIS?!), then herself and Alphys, with Asgore bringing up the rear. That last part of the arrangement was at Toriel's suggestion, on the logic hat she and the human would be the least likely to frighten a human at first glance. Keeping Asgore out of her sight probably didn't hurt either._

_Well, it didn't hurt_ Toriel _, at least._

_The little group made good time, unfair behavior aside, but the glorious sunset that greeted them when they first stepped out of the Underground had faded into dusk by the time they found the first trace of human civilization. Past the edge of the forest ran a dirt road, presumably leading down towards the city in the distance. By its side stood a wooden house that was small even by Underground standards, though a pair of well-tended flower bushes grew to each side of the front door. That seemed like a good omen._

_Alphys gripped Undyne's hand tight as Toriel brushed past Papyrus, leading Frisk towards the door. . ._

\---

The cool water scalded the Amalgamate's body.

Once it began remembering—truly, fully  _remembering_ —it couldn't stop, as though it had opened a door only to realize too late why it had always been locked.

The things it remembered weren't even unpleasant in and of themselves, usually, but none of them made  _sense_ , and it had no way to escape them. There was nothing here to distract itself, nothing at all to hold onto—only the water and the glass and its own pained, unraveling self. Its body was going to melt away completely, spreading across the bottom of the tank until the filter swept it all away.

It needed to get out.

There was no way out.

And then the yellow thing was gone from the room, and Alphys was here, on the other side of the glass with her back turned. It hadn't noticed her arrival.

Alphys. Alphy. In a place and time far away from here, they'd walked hand-in-hand and felt happy. It felt even more real than the water or the tank around the Amalgamate,  but it couldn't walk, and had never left this place. It didn't even have hands.

But if it got her attention, and made her understand that something was wrong, maybe she could act. She could fix this.

Or she'd just pull the Amalgamate out of the tank and hurt it even further.

The melted being trembled quietly as Alphys grabbed what looked like a sheet of paper and crumpled it up, shoving it in her pocket. She approached the glass and spoke—her mouth was moving, at least. Caution winning out, the Amalgamate swam clumsily back into the corner and waited for her to go away.

No way out.

It had tried to get out of the tank again a little earlier, but the new mesh was harder to grab onto. And even if it did get out, there was nowhere to go. Not like back then—when it had escaped to a better place, that was warm, and open, and... different. It had  _friends_ there too, and they were all alive, and happy. Even with the strangely hollow feeling that suffused most of its memories, that part was clear enough. Everyone was happy. Until they weren't.

It was enough to make the Amalgamate want to hit something, but its body felt like it would fall apart at any moment. It would shatter on impact.

Relaxing enough to sleep wasn't really possible anymore, but with its limbs clutched over its head and its eye squeezed shut, it could pretend to be somewhere else. Someone else.

The memories swirled through the Amalgamate and swept it away.

\---

 _Now that it was over, and the demon that looked like a human lay dead, Undyne found herself filled with the weirdest sense of anticlimax. After that_ thing _nearly murdered an innocent child, and then cut her open, and then she clawed her way back from death in a way that even she didn't quite understand... Undyne was pretty sure she'd spent more time talking to the demon than fighting him._

_They weren't weak, not by any stretch of the imagination. In the first wave of attacks, they managed to snag an energy spear right from the air and use it to try and deflect the rest, spinning and twirling like the practiced dancer that faded tutu would suggest. No surprise there, though; she'd read ALL of Alphys' history books and knew what even a normal human could do. Mind-control. Mind-reading. It made perfect sense that it could predict what was coming—Gerson had mentioned something similar about the other humans who fell into the Underground._

_But those special powers weren't enough to save them—just as they'd failed to save those other humans. Though the demon clearly had some idea of how to counter her fighting style, the sheer fury of her magic attacks overwhelmed them before they could get more than a hit or two in._

_Undyne leaned on the spear in her hand, feeling strangely hot and shaky. Or maybe it wasn't so strange; even if she wasn't really injured, she'd spent the past day-and-a-half fueled by adrenaline and desperation rather than food or sleep._ _Then there was the fact that she should be dead by now. She'd already died, by all normal definitions._

_Well, screw THAT. To hell with dying. If the demon-human wanted her gone that badly, it should have tried much harder than it did. She wasn't going anywhere._

_Except New Home. And then the lab. And then bed, probably. Once she'd finished her task here._

_Undyne shook herself, walking with just the slightest hint of unsteadiness across the bridge. She tensed unconsciously as she approached her fallen enemy, though between the blood pooled beneath their body and the spear protruding from their back, it was pretty obvious that they were no longer a threat. Undyne let the spear dissipate, then used the one she held to flip the body over._

_Her stomach lurched at the sight of the dead face at her feet. The stillness was weird but not something a monster like herself would instinctively associate with death,_   _and Gerson's stories had taught her what to expect, but at least the humans in the war were all adults. This one was still in stripes, and with the glint of pure, bottomless hatred gone from their eyes, all that remained was... a kid. A dead human child with brown hair and scraped knees, and of all things, a ratty, now blood-stained old tutu around their waist. Just a kid._

_The same kid who'd moved systematically through Snowdin woods, murdering unsuspecting teenagers along with the guards who tried to rescue them. Half of Waterfall's population was gone, including sweet little Shyren. They'd even killed Papyrus, stupid, naïve, brave Papyrus, who she'd come to love as the little brother she'd never otherwise have. His brother was gone, too, and though Sans was always kind of an obnoxious slacker, he didn't deserve whatever had been done to him._

_And yet, Undyne couldn't help but wonder. If her gut feeling was wrong and this really was a perfectly normal human, did they have siblings or friends who would miss them, too? Would those people mourn for their lost child?_

_Or would they just regret that the kid's attempt at genocide ended here?_

_Undyne turned away and spat, tasting blood and grit. She reached out with the tip of her spear to nudge the dusty toy knife from their hand, then kicked it off the bridge. The plastic pretend-weapon was so small and light that she could barely hear it clattering against the cavern floor below._

_She'd avenged her guard dogs, her friends, and her fellow monsters. She'd saved the Underground. But Undyne didn't feel very triumphant or heroic, or really much of anything except hot and sore and incredibly tired, down to her very SOUL._

_. . .The SOUL. She could have easily believed that this being didn't have one, except that her green magic worked on them just fine. This was it, then. The seventh and final SOUL. Whether he'd absorbed the others yet or not, Asgore now had the power to become a god, break the Barrier, and truly begin the war against humankind._ _If the human really did have a family to mourn for them, at least they wouldn't be doing so for long._

 _Undyne was so distracted that she didn't even hear her phone until the third or fourth ring; given that she'd turned completely to dust, armor and all, before re-forming herself, she wouldn't have expected it to still be there. She had to shuffle around a little to get the phone out from where it had gotten wedged in next to her foot—the holster for her phone_ wasn't _still there—but otherwise it appeared none the worse for wear._

_The sight of a big, scary monster knight in spiky armor talking into a cell phone covered in pink anime stickers was probably objectively hilarious, but Undyne's mind wasn't really there at the moment._

_"H—"_

_"U-UNDYNE!! I s-s-saw everything, I saw you fighting them, and, a-and what you did before that and, a-a-and it was INCREDIBLE, I was s-s-so s-scared I thought you—I thought y-you were g-going to die and— and y-you almost DID and—and—and—" Alphys stammered and stumbled over her words, speaking so fast that Undyne could barely understand her through the tears she was obviously trying to hold back._

_Undyne smiled wanly and waited for Alphys to take a breath, rubbing her forehead with the hand still covered in a steel gauntlet. Then regretted it pretty much instantly. Ouch. "Y-yeah. I... I, um..."_

_What she wanted to say was something like—_ see, I TOLD you I could handle them, no problem _ **.** But they both knew that she'd been quietly preparing herself for the possibility of her own death ever since her call to Alphys the day before, after those first terrible reports came in from Snowdin. What she hadn't been prepared for was... just about anything that did end up happening, really. Not that she was complaining._

_Alphys cut in again, her voice still trembling but suddenly very, very urgent._

_"Y-you need to come back to the lab, r-r-right now! I, I mean, b-bring the SOUL too, but y-y-you need to come back here as soon as possible. A-after... after what happened, you might be hurt r-r-really badly, more than you realize."_

_"Yeah, 'course I'm coming. But don't worry about that, Alphy, I'm—"_

_"Or, m-maybe I should go over there, i-i-if..."_

_"No, Alphys," Undyne stopped her. The human might not be a threat anymore, but she still didn't want her friend anywhere near it. "Just stay where you are. I'll be there soon."_

_She did feel kind of weird, but not nearly as bad as before, when she'd first brought herself back to life. She wasn't going to split apart. She wasn't. She_ refused _._

_Even if Alphys' worry was misplaced, though, Undyne wanted to get back to the lab just as much as her friend wanted her there. More than anything, she just wanted to get out of this cool-looking but heavy armor, take a shower, curl up next to Alphys on the couch with some mindless TV show on, and sleep for about fifty years._

_God, she wanted that more than anything in the world. She'd KILL for it._

_...Which she kind of already did. Literally._

_But there was still the SOUL to be delivered to Asgore, dust to be gathered up, families notified. A body to dispose of. She'd have to see about getting the tattered remains of her guard organized to block off the RUINS, too, to provide the survivors with peace of mind if nothing else. And talking to that poor kid who'd nearly been murdered here wouldn't be a bad idea either. She still felt a little bad for shouting at them, but she'd been dying and desperate. If hurting the kid's feelings was what it took to save their life, so be it._

_Above the dead human's motionless chest, their SOUL finally began to manifest. It glowed intensely, with a rich red color that Undyne certainly wouldn't have predicted. Red was supposed to represent love, wasn't it?_

_Undyne_ _knelt and set the phone down, reaching out almost reverently to cradle the SOUL in her hands. But before she even touched it, the SOUL juddered in the air and cracked, as though struck by an invisible hammer-blow._

_With the phone on the ground, Alphys' voice was a soft, tinny squeak when she spoke up again. Apparently she was still watching from the monitor. "Undyne, w-what's wrong?"_

_"I don't know. The SOUL's—"_

 

_The red SOUL shattered, and time jumped back._

\---

"you ok up there?"

The Amalgamate whimpered faintly as it returned to itself. It was curled up tightly on its side, half of its face just barely above the waterline. It must have floated up to the surface without noticing. The creature blinked its good eye and raised its head enough to see who it was.

Then it let its head drop back down with a light splash.

"i'll take that as a no," Sans said.

The Amalgamate didn't bother responding, still half-seeing the bridge, the dark cavern, the dead human's face. But no, that wasn't right. The human was alive, walking with everyone else, when the monsters all got out...

Except that couldn't be true. They had killed so many. They'd... even killed...

The melted creature shook its head in an unsuccessful attempt at driving the thought away. Any relief it could have found in this memory was poisoned by the sight of that dead face. And the strange, shaky feeling it recalled was only worse in reality. Much worse. There wasn't enough of itself left, it was going to disintegrate...

 

[ _She took her first tentative steps out of the stone archway and looked upward, squinting and shading her eye against the overwhelming brightness. There was so much color. Sunlight shone through the Barrier and into Asgore's garden all the time, but nobody ever told her there was this much_ color _. The sun was setting, and the sky over their heads glowed red and orange, fading to yellow and blue and near-purple at the other edge of the horizon._

 _The two skeleton brothers stood at the cliff's edge, staring upward just like Undyne— though without eyeballs, they could get away with staring directly at the sun. She walked out further, hearing Alphys shuffling behind her._ _The landscape below them stretched out in all directions, the outline of distant mountains dark against. . ._ ]

 

"S... ans..?" the Amalgamate croaked out, reluctantly pushing aside that last memory, then stopped. Even now, some small part of itself recoiled at the idea of asking for help, especially from  _Sans_. More importantly, it didn't know what to ask for, or how. The questions it wanted to ask were all too complicated, and its head hurt enough already.

"you, uh... you need something?"

Yes. It needed help.

The Amalgamate made a soft, pained noise, then was quiet again.

"...oh, jeez," Sans said under his breath as it curled up tighter and covered its face. There was a softly mechanical hum from off to the side of the tank, different from the sound of the filter, and 

 

[ _Now that it was over, and the thing-that-looked-like-a-human-but-wasn't finally lay dead, Undyne staggered and nearly collapsed, overwhelmed by exhaustion and relief. After that demon nearly murdered an innocent child, and then cut her in half, forcing her to claw her way back from death in a way that even she didn't understand..._

_All of a sudden, she had the strangest feeling of déjà vu. Probably a side-effect of the hot, shaky sensation she'd felt ever since her body re-formed. Brushing the feeling aside, she let her spear dissipate from her hand before tugging off both metal gauntlets. Even knowing all about humans' special powers of mind-control and prediction, the evil being's skill surprised her. In the first moments of her first wave of attacks, the demon-human snatched an energy spear right out of the air and used it to deftly deflect the rest, spinning and twirling like the practiced dancer those worn ballet slippers and dusty tutu would suggest. Even when she cleared her mind and tried striking from totally random directions, it avoided the brunt of her attacks with remarkable skill._

_She still overwhelmed them soon enough, but things looked a little dicey there for a while._

_Undyne reached back to loosen the straps of her dented breastplate, breathing deeply. The armor could provide little defense against the pure hatred and evil intent behind the human's attacks, but it didn't feel like they'd broken anything. Her chest and stomach had to be bruised all to hell, but she'd sustained much more serious injuries from her fellow monsters during that mess at New Home awhile back. With an ice pack and something to eat, she'd be fine._

_Allowing the spiked breastplate to fall off with an unceremonious_ CLONK _, Undyne pressed her fingertips against her sternum, feeling through the padded shirt she wore under her armor. Then winced just a little. There were bruises, all right, but otherwise she felt normal. Whole. You could hardly tell from looking at her that she'd been in two pieces no more than five minutes ago._

 _Undyne laughed, fueled more by disbelief and exhaustion than amusement, and ran her hand over the place where her left eye had been. Then she summoned a new energy spear to lean on as she made her way over to the_ ]

 

something brushed against what had been the Amalgamate's hand, startling it back into awareness. Sans sat cross-legged on the little platform Alphys used to reach the tank, and the Amalgamate itself. The top was retracted again, leaving a gap just wide enough to fit a small, bony hand through.

"thought you were gonna try and splash me again there," he remarked, just a little too casually. "you got me the first time around." 

The Amalgamate didn't really remember what he was talking about. It had been angry at him for sleeping too much, or something. Possibly? It had sprinted past and saw him asleep, when he was supposed to be helping with... catching someone? Everything was all blended together now.

It almost wanted to try and ask, but the effort didn't seem worth it. He probably wouldn't answer, anyway.

Sans sighed and leaned back. "...i gave it a shot, just for the record. trying to talk her into letting you outta here. but alphys is... she's her own kind of determined, i guess."

The Amalgamate raised its head from the water, faintly hopeful. "Let... out?"

The tank  _was_ open. Maybe he was finally going to free it from this prison? It wouldn't fix whatever was happening to it, but at least it wouldn't be trapped in there anymore.

"but sooner or later, we'll end up right back where we started. and none of this will even matter. so why pick a fight when there's no benefit to it, y'know?"

...Or not. The Amalgamate didn't really know what he was talking about, except that he wasn't responding at all the what it had tried to ask. It let out a frustrated hiss. Sans looked down at himself and laughed. He didn't sound happy at all, but the sound still stretched the Amalgamate's frayed patience to its limit. "yeah. sounds even more like a weak excuse when you say it out loud, huh?"

 "L...et... m...e... ou...t..."

Maybe it was just a trick of the weak, flickering light, but Sans' constant grin almost appeared to twist into a grimace. "...i can't, undyne. i'm real sorry. just h—"

He stopped.

"...crap," Sans muttered under his breath. He reached out to close off the tank again, left his hand hovering in midair, then drew back and slid off the platform. His feet slammed down against the floor much harder than it seemed like they should have. Then the world flickered and went dark, and he was gone.

 

[ _"I'll take care of this! Get out of here!" Undyne roared. The monster kid whimpered, but finally turned and ran back across the bridge as fast as their short legs could carry them. For once, they didn't trip and fall._

_She waited for the sound of their quick little footsteps to fade before doubling over and coughing, the inside of her mouth coated with sticky blood and dust._

_It was over._  ]

 

Or at least out of sight. The Amalgamate could hear both his and Alphys' voice just outside of the room, a little muffled but not so difficult to make out. 

"—were you doing in there?" Alphys asked, suspicion in her voice.

"i told you i wasn't gonna do anything, and i'm not. just chill."

 "Okay. Fine."

"did you, uh... do it? what you came down here for?"

There was a long silence.

"It was too late. By the time we got here, th-they were already... um... y-y-you kn-know."

"...ah."

"There wasn't anything I could have done. They looked r-really bad when I brought them in, and th-they... I d-don't think they were going to make it, no matter what."

". . ."

"W-what?"

 

[ _But why did they look so impatient? Almost..._ bored _? As though they'd heard it already, every single word that she spoke..._ ]

 

". . ."

"H-how is Undyne doing? She was acting a little bit sluggish before, but I don't know if it was j-just because of me, or... I don't kn-know."

"she seems fine to me. i checked on her just now. can we get outta here?"

"O-okay. I j-just need to..."

The voices faded from earshot, and the Amalgamate used its tail to propel itself just close enough to 

 

[ _There was a flower, a little yellow flower, and a flash of white light—_ ]

 

see through the little gap, where Sans had left the tank's lid open. The Amalgamate raised one limb as high as it could reach, and what had been its hand wavered dangerously as it brushed against the glass.

The Amalgamate dropped its arm back down, letting it rest against its chest.

It knew what it wanted, now. It wanted to get away, not just away from this tank but away from... everything. It wanted to be the person it remembered being, who felt emotions it couldn't feel and could move around freely, and have friends, and feel hope even when life went wrong. A person with a name, and with something the Amalgamate couldn't name, beyond the fact that it was something it lacked. 

It hugged itself and sank back down, shaking with helpless fury. It might have cried; underwater, there was no way to know for sure.

The single desire burning within it—and what it knew to be impossible—was to go back to the way life used to be.

It just wanted to go back.

Just to go back.

Go back.

Go back.

 

_Go back._

 

 

 

The Amalgamate woke up in its tank.

Its body still felt like it was burning. Nothing about its surroundings had changed either, except that the tank's mesh cover was fully closed again. Alphys must have come back at some point, then. But that didn't really matter anymore.

 

The Amalgamate curled back up and tried to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wish I didn't take so long in getting such a downer of a chapter out, but... (´・ω・`)


	9. DETERMINATION

ENTRY NUMBER 13:

* The first phase of the experiment is complete.  
* I don't yet know if it worked, but I've done all that I can for now.  
* Until then, the rest is up to Undyne.  
* (i'd write more but my claws are shaking so hard...) 

* * *

The purple cephalopod kid slouched back in their chair, flicking at the wheel of the skateboard they'd brought in with them. "What's even the POINT of going to school? We don't do anything there except answer dumb questions that don't matter."

"pointless or not, you're better off doin' something instead of nothing. besides, learning is cool."

They rolled their eyes at that, and honestly Sans would have been way more disappointed in them if they didn't. While he'd long since gotten used to handling visitors when Alphys wasn't around, his background as an apathetic homeschooler-turned-dropout left him totally unqualified for this kind of conversation. But telling a stressed-out teenager to go ahead and give up on life was a bad look, even if their analysis of the situation was completely spot-on.

"But it's just so DEPRESSING," the kid said. "The teacher whose class I was supposed to go into this year is gone. And so are a bunch of other kids. Or—most of them aren't GONE gone, but their parents pulled them out of school."

"then it won't be any better if one more person stops showing up, will it?" Sans pointed out.

He expected them to roll their eyes again, but instead they just leaned back in their chair and tapped their finger-tentacles against the skateboard lying across their lap. "Nobody will care. They're all used to it by now."

Well, that wasn't a downer at all.

"sorry, bud," Sans said. The kid still hardly looked at him, leaving the skeleton to sit and tap a bony fingertip against his knee in thought.

"uh, look, i'll be real honest. this is something you should go talk to someone about. somebody who ain't me. not that—not that i don't care, but i also doubt i can help you here." He paused, then seemed to grin a little wider. "actually, i lied. got any paper?"

"Uh, yeah..?"

"gimme."

They scooted over and hooked the toe of their shoe under their backpack strap, pulling the bag up from the floor and pawing through it for a notebook. They tore out a sheet of lined paper and handed it over, while Sans dug through his hoodie pockets for a pen. Switching over to his right hand—not that his handwriting needed the extra help in looking terrible—he scribbled across the page:

 

[calli doesnt have to go to school for a week luv alphys ps this is a real royal decree ☺]

 

before handing it back over.

The kid seemed like the type to think it was funny, and at worst it was still an excuse to prank-call some random middle-school teacher when they inevitably hassled the kid. But they didn't even glance at the note before shoving it into their backpack.

"...Thanks, I guess," they mumbled, then slung their backpack up onto their shoulder and slipped their skateboard under their arm before jumping down from their chair.

The kid left before Sans could say anything, but then, he wasn't in a huge rush to even try. As the front door opened and shut, he reached over to the little jar of sugar cubes Asgore used for tea and Alphys used for moral support, crunching one between his teeth like candy.

"ok."

He couldn't say he was even surprised or disappointed anymore.

Maybe he was just losing his touch when it came to humor, but there was also the strangest feeling hanging over the whole Underground all day now.

Or at least half the day, since Sans woke up at the crack of noon and couldn't really comment on the morning.

Monsters moved through the capital as if in a dream, hardly looking at what they were doing or where they were going. It wasn't true for everyone, and not always to the same extent, but they seemed to be following invisible paths laid out before them, repeating lines without thinking about them. It reminded Sans of that cat monster who worked at the burger place in MTT Resort, except he really was just going through the motions and knew it. So far as Sans could tell, nobody he encountered today sensed the wrongness to their behavior.

Except for Sans himself.

When he'd returned to New Home, the cephalopod kid was sitting on the front step, waiting for him there. Actually they were waiting for Alphys, but they didn't even bother to ask where she was or when she'd return before launching into their whole anti-school spiel to Sans. For  while there he really thought they'd drifted back to normal as the conversation had progressed, but then they just went right back to... whatever  _that_ was, once they'd said their piece. Or maybe they'd just taken offense to what he said, feeling brushed-off? It wouldn't be the first time that happened.

Sans wasn't quite sure what to think, or what to do, aside from going back to bed and hoping the strange mood would dissipate by the time he woke up.

As he reached for the jar again, Sans identified at least one other thing that seemed off; the vase of dead flowers was gone from the table. In a normal household that wouldn't mean much, but Alphys had an almost pathologic aversion to changing anything about this place. Unopened containers of snails still sat in the fridge, and over the past months she'd said absolutely nothing about replacing any of the oversized furniture. Asgore's beloved golden flowers all grew or rotted right where he'd left them, and the small signs of new occupation scattered here and there—cups and dishes in the sink, the occasional muddy footprint—made it seem more like squatters had moved in, rather than a new monarch and her left-hand(ed) skeleton.

None of that made any difference to a slob like Sans, except that he definitely recalled seeing the vase earlier that day. After Alphys left.

He sat for a while, quietly steeling himself even as he seriously considered just going back to sleep. Then he popped another sugar cube into his mouth (for courage, or cavities, same difference) and slid down off his chair. Without any observers to worry about, he vanished from the room the instant his feet touched the floor.

\---

 "sup," Sans said, leaning back against the wall by the doorway. "didn't think you'd be back so soon."

It didn't look like Alphys had gotten around to refilling the vase yet, though the knees of her white pants were heavily grass-stained. Between the green and her yellow scales, she almost blended in with the patch of overgrown golden flowers surrounding her.

"It was starting to bother me. I must have kept watering them after I p-probably should have stopped and the inside w-was getting all gross and slimy," Alphys explained,  her shrug sending the flowers bobbing back and forth.

"...uh. well, that's more than i've done around here," Sans said, not quite sure how that answer connected to what he'd said. He was going to give Alphys the benefit of the doubt and assume she didn't mean she'd ditched some dying monster out of a sudden, desperate urge to go play in the dirt. But his read on people had been so off-kilter all day, he almost wouldn't be surprised if he was wrong.

Alphys fidgeted, scraping her hand across the leg of her pants to dislodge a particularly stubborn cluster of flower seeds. Her robe was draped across the arm of Asgore's throne. "I moved the Whimsun to the lab. So I'll go back there again soon, just, um... I j-just need some time to think about how I should continue."

"you talked to whoever you needed to?" Sans asked, nodding in approval when Alphys' expression told him  _yes_. What she did was less important than  _if_ did did anything; none of it would matter in the end, but in the meantime, Sans didn't want to put up with a repeat of what happened when Alphys was the royal scientist. Secrecy wasn't exactly her strongest area, and he could do without the secondhand panic and stress.

Alphys rubbed her temples as if to ward off a headache, grabbing the still-empty vase as she got up. "Until then, c-could you, ahh, maybe check on Undyne for me, j-just really quick? I went in there myself a little earlier, but I can never tell how much of her behavior is because of how she feels, and how much is j-just, ah... h-how she feels about me. H-heh... ehehe."

Sans didn't say anything.

He'd planned to wait a little longer and segue into the topic with something resembling tact, but he guessed this worked about as well as anything else.

"Sans? Is something wrong?"

He scuffed the bottom of one slipper against the stone wall, making an intentional show of uncertainty. Having some kind of outward signs of emotion to read tended to reassure people, and if anyone needed reassurance, it was Alphys.

"actually, that's somethin' i wanted to talk to you about."

She looked down into the vase, tilting it from one side to the other. He could see water sloshing around inside; the throne room was bright with late-afternoon sunlight which shone through the thin glass. "O-okay?" 

"i'm cool with helping you out in general. you know that. but this thing with undyne... i'm not feeling real good about it."

Sans did not feel guilty, because you had to be responsible for something to be guilty of it. There was nothing he could have done to save Undyne from her own nature.

...Simple pity. That was it. He just couldn't stand to watch her go on suffering for no good reason, especially someone who'd been close to his brother. Personal responsibility had nothing to do with it.

Sans reached up and rubbed the vertebrae at the back of his neck.

 "Maybe it isn't a lot of fun, b-but you don't have to stay long if you're bored. It's just that you can get there a lot faster than I can. But if you don't want to, th-then... just say so," Alphys added, her expression hardening behind her glasses. Well, that didn't bode well, because Sans hadn't even said the part he expected to get under her scales, yet.

"heh, sheesh. i got low standards, but i'm not THAT low yet," Alphys stood stiffly, apparently less than appreciative of even his weak attempt at levity. "...alph, she's goin' nuts in there."

"I know she doesn't like being in the tank. But I c-can't do anything about that until she gets better. W-which she has been! Up until... what happened the other day."

 "and how long's that gonna take?"

Sans stopped to check Alphys' expression, weighed his options, and switched to a gentler tone. "you spent months trying to fix the others, and it never went anywhere. you're trying to do the right thing here, as always, and that's good. but there's no shame in quitting an impossible task. you've already done as much as anyone could ask, and undyne wouldn't—she isn't gonna hold it against you."

"That situation was different," Alphys said. "I didn't have any idea what I was doing then. B-but... Undyne IS different, too. She can do things other monsters can't. She'll get better."

"how do you know that?"

"How do you know that she WON'T, Sans? You w-weren't e-even there, that day!" Alphys' voice rose. As much as she'd improved her public speaking skills, her old tendencies returned in force whenever she got too upset or too anxious. This conversation wasn't progressing the way Sans had hoped.

"you're right, i didn't. and i don't know," Sans said, raising both hands in a gesture of appeasement. "but neither of us can know what the future holds, either. so maybe it's better to just... settle, and do what you can to make her happy now, as she is. even if it means other people will find out about her."

If you squinted hard enough, you could practically see Sans' last chance at success doing up in a cloud of dust and smoke. Smoothing over awkward conversations was one thing, but debates and arguments were foreign territory to Sans. In the few times he'd found himself caught up in some sort of clash, he usually just bolted in the other direction and napped until the whole issue blew over. But then, he usually wasn't the instigator.

 "I can't do that. And I'm not going to give up on Undyne, n-no matter what you think. N-not a-a-after all this time." Alphys' hands trembled around the flower vase she still held.

"i never said you should give up on her. just— what are you scared of? so she ends up like snowy's mom. except, uh, more. that ain't the worst outcome in the world. if water's the issue, just bring her back to waterfall," Sans said.

"I c-can't d-d-do that, Sans. I'm n-not going to do that to her," Alphys repeated.

"why not?" he pressed.

 "S-since we do you even care this much about Undyne, all of a sudden?! B-because I KNOW that y-y-you d-don't!"

Alphys' hands shook harder, until finally she stomped over and banged the glass vase down onto Asgore's throne, water splashing out the top and darkening the purple seat-cushion. She grabbed her robe off the arm of the throne and rustled her way past Sans, leaving a path of semi-crushed flowers in her wake. Sans followed her out into the hallway and stopped there, watching as she walked out towards the hall beyond.

Well, since this whole conversation was an irreparable disaster anyway...

"look, i'm just trying to understand here. what are you afraid is gonna happen, that hasn't already?"

No answer.

"...'cause someone else already does,right?"

"Sh-shut up, Sans," Alphys mumbled, then hunched her shoulders almost protectively and kept walking. Sans didn't follow her any further.

He yawned, tilting his head from side to side to crack his neck; a small, lonely-looking, out of place figure at the end of the empty Judgement Hall.

Welp.

At least now he could say he'd tried.

\---

Sans gave Alphys her space for the rest of the afternoon, anticipating but not exactly waiting for the inevitable text message to come. In the meantime, he'd defaulted to his usual stress-response of hiding and eating. Actually, his most common response to conflict was napping, usually after but sometimes before eating. It was all semantics, really. Stress didn't always have to be involved, either.

He crumpled up the wrapper to his burger and gave it a flick, sending it bouncing across the floor until it rolled under the sheet covering his machine. He could hear it come to a stop after tapping against the metal. The floor in general was pretty grubby these days, even more than it once had been;  his visits to the workshop became increasingly sporadic as time went on, before stopping completely on the day he thought the world would end. And then it didn't.

Were the readings all wrong, or had he missed some outside factor somehow? It still bugged him, though he couldn't really justify trying to troubleshoot the whole process by this point, any more than he could justify convincing Alphys to change her mind. Sooner or later the anomaly would do its thing. A different Sans would wake up in his room on his mattress, in a world where Alphys still hid in her lab and Undyne showed up at his sentry stations to carp about his laziness, and where his brother was still alive. And this Sans—the person he knew himself to be—would disappear along with everyone else in this world.

Well, at least other-Sans and friends would have slightly better prospects. Even accounting for the anomaly's past behavior. A change of heart didn't seem likely, but it wasn't impossible, either...

  _ah. here._

Sans pulled his binder out from the drawer, making a token effort at brushing off the (non-monster) dust before opening it up and flipping to the back cover. He pulled out a sun-faded old photo and smoothed it out with his fingers, gently, treating it with all the care that a different Sans might have felt. Then his phone buzzed and he dropped the binder back into its drawer and furtively shoved the photo into his hoodie pocket. His phone buzzed a second time, as if in protest.

[ sans? ]

[ are u there? ]

He seriously considered answering with a "no" and leaving it at that, but Alphys probably wasn't in the mood.

Belatedly, he also remembered that he'd more or less set her up for a confusing and possibly-stressful phone call with some random kid's teacher earlier that afternoon, but that could be a problem for a-day-into-the-future-Sans. He tapped out a quick reply, not the least bit bothered by the web of scratches across the screen. There was probably a way to avoid those, maybe some gloves, but. Eh.

[ yeah ]

Sans watched the screen and waited as Alphys either typed out an extraordinarily long message or, more likely, wrote out and erased several different iterations of the same one before sending it.

[ i know i shouldnt have Yelled at u because it doesnt help or fix anything ]

[ i was mad abt Undyne's chart and maybe i should have Mentioned it first instead of getting upset ]

[ but it still Really wasn't ok so... ] 

[ wait, what about her chart? ]

 [ The Drawings V.V; ] 

[ i didn't draw on anything ]

 [ you didn't draw it?? ] 

[ nope. sure it wasn't our friend from the other day? ]

 [ no i started this page after they came to the lab ]

[ an earlier one's missing though and i think they took it (>.<) ]

[ and now this one is Completely messed up ]

[ send me a picture ]

 Alphys soon obliged, and Sans had to wonder how she'd concluded that  _he_ was the "artist". Firstly because it looked like a ten-year old drew it, secondly because she knew dam well that he couldn't draw half as well as a ten-year old. He could also see why Alphys was so upset by what she thought he'd done, though; the drawings ran all the way across the medical chart in glittery pink, turning her meticulous notes into even more of an unreadable mess than they were already.

The little dog in the corner was a cute touch, though. He liked the ears.

[yeah, those aren't mine]

[ you're the only other person who's been down there ]  

[ am i? really? ] 

[ ............................. ]

[ how did u find out? ] 

[ skeleton magic ]

[ (>_>) ]

[ How Did You Find Out? ]

[ unless there's a camera setup i don't know about, you found out about the break-in pretty quick, considering you were in new home ]

Sans waited but received no reply. Since Alphys wasn't the type to forget a text message or deem herself too busy to answer one—even now that she was the queen—he assumed she either didn't want to answer, or had just keeled over.

...Considering somewhat-recent events, that wasn't funny. In any case, Sans decided to go against his usual habit and send a double-text.

[ am i wrong? ]

[ idk. if it wasnt u then idk ]

[ can u come to the lab? i'm almost there ]

[ i'll explain then ]

[ k ]

Sans returned his phone to his inventory, half-tempted to stay in the workshop and sleep. It would't be the first time he'd done that, and he always got a little drowsy after eating a lot. Instead he shook himself,  took a step towards the door, and then remembered one more thing.

Heading back over to the machine, he kicked the crumpled-up burger wrapper away from it, until it came to rest on the opposite side of the room instead.

And here, bro always thought he didn't care about keeping his spaces clean.

\---

Alphys clutched the little glass vial to her chest, its red glow the only spot of brightness in the darkened hallway.

"so, what made you decide to act so decisively? until now, you seemed... iffy."

She chewed her lip in thought before answering. "I-it's not that I wasn't going to do anything before! I j-just... felt like I needed to act quickly. I couldn't get the thought out of my head, th-the image of what would happen if I didn't. Y-you haven't seen them yet, Sans, but th-they look kind of... bad."

"i gotcha," Sans said as he padded at her side, watching the distant expression on her face with curiosity. It might have been worth pondering in light of everyone else's behavior, but it seemed he had better to do at the moment.

Once they'd met up in the lab, Alphys explained  _almost_ everything; there was definitely a lot of paraphrasing involved, but it was still more than she'd admitted up until now.

According to Alphys, someone else did indeed seem to know about her newest experiment.

They had called her, speaking in a perfect imitation of Undyne's voice, and warned her that something dangerous might be happening in the lab. When she tried to call the number back a few hours later, she ended up on the line with some grouchy middle-aged monster who had no idea what she was trying to ask about.  She concluded from this that the phone had been temporarily "borrowed" to make the call, which Sans thought was plausible, but it also conveniently excused her from having to try and call again.

And now, just today, someone got into the lab and decided to doodle all over her friend's medical chart.

Between the petty cruelty of imitating  _Undyne_ of all people, plus the drawings, it seemed like a child's mean-spirited prank—as unlikely as that might be.

On the other hand, this wasn't the first Sans had heard of some mysterious little being dispensing supernaturally timely advice.

Either way it was worth taking a look around, if only to calm Alphys down. Plus it was probably better than sitting around the workshop being a sad-sack, as much as he wanted a nap right now.

"Well, ah..." Alphys stopped walking as they reached the doorway to the tank room, and Sans stopped with her. "I guess I'll go and, um... do w-what I said th-that I would. I'll, ahh... I guess I'll come find you when it's done? Or the other way around."

Sans shrugged in reply. "sure."

"Okay." Alphys then fidgeted in place for a moment. "...Th-thanks."

"well, hey. what's a skeleton for if not support, right?"

Alphys snorted, and he was  _pretty_ sure he saw a smile before she turned and walked away. Sans wondered how much she really intended to do what she'd said. She was a godawful liar most of the time, but also so twitchy and anxious while telling complete truths that you couldn't always be sure.

It wouldn't make any difference in the end, but he still wondered.

With that cheerful thought in mind, Sans entered and passed right through the tank room, poking around the general vicinity of the cabinets for some other evidence that someone had been here. The kind of person to sneak into a place and then start doodling all over the nearest piece of paper probably wasn't the brightest crayon in the box, after all.

"S...ans..." the aquatic Amalgamate rasped from behind his back. It floated near the surface of the water, curled up on its side. He'd sort of been trying to look away despite what Alphys had asked, but he suspected it had been watching him move around the room this whole time. Its eyes were dull, and half-shut.

Wait, eye **s**?

"heya, undyne. what's..." Sans started, in the same calm and hopefully reassuring way he addressed most of the other Amalgamates. Then he actually gave her a proper look.

It wasn't easy to see at a distance, but the outline of her body was turning fuzzy. Her body had gained a faintly translucent quality, too; the overhead lights shone dimly through her in places, the way he imagined sunlight might shine through the leaves and branches of trees in a forest.

Which was concerning because a cheesy metaphor like that should not have ever, ever, ever applied to Undyne, not in a million years. Sulking in corners was one thing, but this was the same woman who'd once torn a giant branch off a tree with her bare hands and chased Papyrus around with it for fun.

"jeez," Sans muttered under his breath. Up close he could see that her left eye was really no more than a dark, empty socket, with only a faint pinpoint of light shining within. That definitely wasn't normal. Not for the kind of monster that she was, anyway. "are you... feelin' ok up there?"

It was a pointless question and he didn't know why he bothered, but what else was he supposed to say? It was either that or  _oh crap_ , which he didn't feel like she'd appreciate.

But Undyne actually seemed to consider the question before slowly shaking her head.

"...N...o..."

"ok. then..." Sans backed away, pointing to the door with his thumb. "you want me to get alphys? she can, uh, help with this."

Undyne shook her head a little harder, but her voice didn't change. "N...ot... h...e...r..."

The answer chilled him. Maybe it was just that she was speaking in single syllables, which left less opportunity for garbling them around, but Undyne sounded eerily like... herself, far more than she had for a very long time. Not that he'd heard her say much lately. But it was hard to imagine Undyne of all monsters sounding so dull and listless.

Sans was ready to leave both despite  _and_ because of what Undyne said, before she raised her hand and clumsily signed something. Between the fact that she didn't exactly have fingers or real hands anymore, and the fact that she was only using one of them anyway, it took a second for him to parse out what she might be saying.

_BODY ALL HURTS._

He stood in place, halfway between the tank and the door.

Part of Sans—most of him—still wanted to get out of here and grab Alphys from wherever she was. Firstly because she knew more about Amalgamates than he did, and secondly because then this would be her problem instead. But Undyne didn't want that, and she appeared to be in pain. He was apathetic and he was lazy, but Sans wasn't unkind. Not by nature. Not by choice. What monster was?

As she wrapped her arms back around her midsection, Sans returned to the tank and gently rested a bony hand against the glass.

"she, uh... she can do something about whatever's goin' on right now. way more than i can. are you completely sure you don't want me to get her?"

"D...on't." Undyne twitched and clutched at her head, her remaining eye turning unfocused before she snapped back out of it. "...Pl...ea...se..."

"ok. if you don't want me to, i won't," Sans said. "just... is there... ...jeez. is there anything else you want me to do right now?"

Sans wasn't easily rattled, but this was starting to freak him out. Two days ago she'd been a half-crazy ball of unused energy, and Alphys had been here at least once or twice since then. If Undyne was that unwell then Alphys should have noticed, and if she'd noticed, she would've mentioned it. The only thing he could think of was that something had gone terribly wrong some time ago, but Undyne hid it until she couldn't anymore. Papyrus used to complain about her resistance to any sort of help even when she caught an ordinary cold. Could that be it?

Her expression twisted before she curled up tighter, blocking her face from view, and Sans wondered if the weird mood permeating the Underground was getting to her as well. Then she said, in a frail whisper halfway drowned-out by the sound of lapping water, "St...ay... with... m...e..?"

He should get Alphys.

He should get Alphys  _right now_.

Instead Sans walked around the side of the tank until it was between himself and the door, sitting on the panel that would raise him high enough to reach the tank's interior. Undyne propelled herself through the water just enough to float at his side, a foot and a half or so below where he now sat.

"hey," he said again. Undyne—or the being that used to be her—made a soft burble-trill sound that probably wasn't supposed to mean anything except what it was. She raised one hand towards him, movements slow and deliberate, and without words he knew what she was asking for. He felt around the tank's rim for a moment, trying to remember where the button had been, and pressed it. There was a mechanical whir as he let the mesh retract, exposing the water to the open air. Then he reached down and offered his hand.

Even without physical nerve endings, her hand was almost painfully hot to the touch. Sans didn't comment or complain, letting her clutch onto his hand and curl around it even though he had to sit really awkwardly to reach that far. His arms were short.

"i gave it a shot, just for the record. trying to get you outta here. but alphys, she's... well, she's her own kind of determined, i guess."

He could feel Undyne breathing, in and out. Slowly.

"she did this 'cause she cares about you, y'know. because she cares about you, and thinks this is right. maybe it is, or it should be, except..."

Undyne said nothing, facing away from him so he only saw the back of her head. Sans had to wonder how much of this she understood, but in a weird and messed-up way, it was a relief to talk to someone who either couldn't or didn't care what he said.

Shifting around to make his awkward sitting position slightly less so, Sans rested his elbow against the tank's top edge and his chin on his empty hand. "eventually, nothing anyone does here will matter. we'll all go back to the start, not even remembering what happened. and who even knows what'll be next."

Maybe the anomaly would decide to kill everyone again, and they'd all end up right back here. With Alphys ruling as the queen, and Undyne in this tank, and Sans watching from the sidelines, doing nothing.

Maybe the anomaly wouldn't falter as it struck Mettaton down, and Sans would have to do something desperate. Maybe it would decide to kill everyone, and succeed.

Maybe it would make everything right again, and choose to be kind after all.

 

And maybe all of these possibilities already happened a hundred times over.

The pale flesh of Undyne's ruined hand wavered around the edges, leaking in between his metacarpals and phalanges as though he'd reached into a vat of melted candle wax. He moved his hand around a little, jostling hers along with it.

"undyne? you still here with me?" She glanced back at the sound of her name, gaze sliding past Sans and fixing on some point in the air behind him before she turned away once more.

"...alright," he said. He wasn't used to opening up even this much, and the realization of what he'd just said left him uncomfortable. Confiding your secrets to someone because you trusted them, or because it might be good for them to know—that was one thing, but dumping all your problems on someone because they wouldn't be around long enough to care was quite another. And Sans hadn't absolutely, completely trusted someone for a long time now. Not the kind of trust that made it okay to say the kind of thing that he just did.

Undyne wrapped her other hand around his and pulled it closer to her chest. He could see her face in profile if he leaned in far enough; there was tension there, around her eye and in the set of her jaw, as though she was clenching her fangs tightly together. Her eye remained fixed on the glass, staring straight ahead despite the movement within (what Sans guessed to be) her peripheral vision. Slowly, the faint sense of wrongness that had surrounded Sans all day coalesced into a new kind of worry.

He'd seen that expression exactly twice before.

Once, when he was very young, and his creator suddenly wouldn't look him in the eye anymore. That monster had been his whole world, back then, and by necessity baby-Sans was even better at gleaning information from body language than his mildly-responsible older self. The look on his face had scared the hell out of Sans, convinced him that something very, very bad was coming, even if he didn't know what it was. He'd tried to hide.

(That instinct couldn't have been more wrong, as it turned out, but the feeling of helpless, nameless terror wasn't easy to forget.)

He saw that expression a second time on a bridge in Snowdin woods, after he offered his hand to a dusty human with a really bad sense of humor. 

"listen, can i, uh... have my hand back? i gotta do something real quick." Sans gave his arm a light tug, but Undyne didn't let go. She didn't react at all. Sans wiggled his hand around, but it was so firmly stuck that she might not have been able to let him go even if she wanted. "undyne, can y—"

She wrenched Sans down towards the water in the same instant he pushed back off the raised platform, managing to brace his arm against the glass just soon enough to avoid getting dragged in—though it left him awkwardly dangling high above the floor. He scrabbled against the side of the tank, hindered by the fact that he was much weaker and, despite Undyne's appearance, much frailer than his attacker. With one hit point to his name, letting his arm get ripped off and escaping coyote-in-a-bear-trap-style wasn't going to work.

"wh— what are you—?!" Sans managed, too busy trying avoid getting his arm pulled out of its socket to reflect much on the pointless question. Undyne pulled even harder, trying to swim downward and almost breaking his grip on the glass in the process.

But her body still looked to be in the same condition as before, the sudden violence of her attack actually working against her; both of her hands were melted and wavering around their edges, no more solid than wax at _best_. Sans clung to the glass and twisted his other arm as much as he could manage, using the solid bone to dig away at the gelatinous not-quite-fingers holding him fast.

Then he was free, and falling backwards, and only (metaphorical) muscle-memory saved him from cracking his head open against the hard tile floor, like a  _real_  cool guy. Instead he rolled backwards, letting the motion plus his layers of clothing absorb most of the impact. He scrambled back away from the tank, panting heavily, both slippers long-gone.

This wasn't the first time an Amalgamate tried to attack him, they could get pretty ornery when they were hungry or startled or stressed-out. Even Snowy's mom tried to take a bite out of Sans once or twice. But they never attacked completely out of nowhere, in a moment of total calm—melted and messed up or not, they were still the same monsters they'd always been.

The Amalgamate perched on the top edge of the tank, teetering in place, having apparently used the momentum from Sans' frantic attempts at escape to reach the edge and haul itself up. Its body dissolved into liquid, pouring unnaturally quickly down the glass before re-forming into something like its original shape.

Sans summoned his blue magic and thrust his hand forward to hold the Amalgamate in place, but there was nothing there for his magic to latch onto. No hint of a SOUL. His hand drifted back down, his eye sockets wide and dark.

 She... she did have a SOUL, didn't she?

That was a question to be puzzled over later, because now was the time to not be in this room. Sans pushed himself to his feet as the Amalgamate re-formed its body, making it about five feet before there was a pained hiss and a flash of electric blue light. Sans dodged to the right, but the spear moved right along with him, as if Undyne had anticipated that exact move.

The humming energy spear drove straight through Sans' midsection and pinned him to the floor like a bug on a corkboard, which would have been much more of a problem if he wasn't a skeleton. Luckily his actual body mass was much smaller than his size suggested, and once the initial shock of  _oh-god-i'm-about-to-die_  wore off, shrugging his way out of his hoodie and letting the spear just tear through his cotton tee shirt was easy enough.

But before Sans could flee any further, his SOUL flickered green, then held, holding him in place much more effectively than the spear could have. As Sans dropped back down into a sitting position, the Amalgamate dragged itself slowly across the room towards him, its reluctant expression long gone.

"undyne, STOP. please? undyne, quit this—" he wasn't getting through to her and if he could, this wouldn't be happening. Finally Sans resorted to the one tactic that might have saved him, if only he'd done it sooner. " _ALPHYS!!_ "

Normally he didn't like to make any real show of magic power, but he had bigger fish to fry—and oh god, his last thoughts were going to be some stupid pun. Of  _course_ they were.

With another burst of magic, Sans summoned up a wall of interlaced magical bones, then a pair of blasters hovering at his sides. Killing or even seriously harming Undyne wasn't the goal in any way—but if he could just distract or delay her long enough to break free of her green magic, he could shortcut to safety. All he needed was a few seconds.

The grinning blasters opened their jaws and fired in a blinding flash of light, then left Sans blinking in the sudden darkness as the twin skulls faded away. The blasters hadn't even missed, or failed to deal damage, but his attack just... stopped. His bone attacks were similarly ineffective, doing nothing to prevent the Amalgamate from pulling itself closer, with no more effort than before.

The green magic gave out with remarkably little difficulty on Sans' part. He scooted back as he summoned his blue magic once again, pulling and reshaping and  _willing_ it to open a way out for him.

Too late.

Undyne lunged forward and more or less fell on top of him, grabbing onto his shoulders and slamming him down against the floor. Sans squeezed his eyes shut and curled up, trying to protect his skull, feeling Undyne’s liquefied hands melding into the porous bones of his clavicle. He tried to use the shortcut anyway, even though it would do nothing except transport himself and Undyne somewhere else. Then there was nothing left for him to do except detach himself from what was happening, or try. He was going to die here, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

He was going to die, the anomaly would eventually go back in time, and he—some version of himself—would wake up in Snowdin none the wiser.

Nothing that happened here mattered.

Nothing.

The last thing he heard was his own skull cracking against stone.

 

 

By the time Alphys reached the tank room, there was no sign of anyone there, living or dead, save for a torn and slightly dusty hoodie lying in a heap just a few feet from the doorway.

\---

For ten minutes or so, there was a hushed silence.

Then Flowey threw down the gel pen clutched in his vine and shrieked out to the empty cavern, “Oh my GOD, FINALLY!!”

The first RELOAD was the good kind of surprising, it made him _happy_ , even—a full RESET would have been even better, but after months of nothing, he’d happily accept a RELOAD as a signal that his sibling was up to something new. Maybe they were fighting someone on the surface, or perhaps trying out different iterations of the same conversation with some particularly amusing human.

And then there was another RELOAD.

And another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another

—faster and faster, much too quickly for them to serve any purpose whatsoever except for driving Flowey nuts. If there was a literal, physical RELOAD button, then it was like they were just mindlessly slamming their fist against it. Why they were doing that he had no way to know, but it more or less forced him to stay frozen in place as time jumped back and back and back every five seconds, for what felt like five HOURS.

Eventually they’d come to a stop, giving Flowey a reprieve of maybe fifteen minutes. Luckily he happened to be in the cavern where Chara fell, so at least he could track the passage of time from the fading sunlight in the slice of the sky visible to him.

There was another RELOAD. Then one more, about two minutes later.

He thought he really was going to lose it, until finally, _mercifully_ , the constant RELOADing stopped.

For about four hours.

Then came the next RELOAD, and another—after about four hours, once again. And again. And again. And again.

Flowey had long since lost count at this point, but he was fairly sure he’d spent the equivalent of two days or more doing nothing at except sitting in this stupid empty cavern among his mindless flower brethren and feeling time hop back and forth like an idiot schoolchild playing hopscotch. But then the four-hour mark came and went, the exact moment at which the RELOADs kept coming now, but it didn't happen.

Another minute passed. Then another. Maybe it was really over, whatever _it_ was. There had been a clear purpose to Chara's RELOADing during their fights against the fish, and something exciting for Flowey to watch besides, but all _th_ _is_  had made no sense at all.

He remained as he was, holding his breath as much as a flower could, watching the light from the sky grow dim as evening approached. He wouldn’t move yet, just in case, just to avoid the disorientation of another RELOAD. But he thought—he _hoped—_ they were over now. He didn’t think he could take any more.

“What the hell are you DOING up there, Chara..?” Flowey complained, drooping tiredly.

A gentle breeze swirled down through the gap in the cavern roof, through the Barrier, rustling the mound of golden flowers before him.


	10. Fallen

ENTRY NUMBER 08:

* Although they used to be really close, Sans doesn't ever discuss his brother.  
* I don't mention Undyne either, but that's partially because I don't have anyone to confide in.  
* Whenever I bring up the past, Sans always finds a way to avoid the subject.  
* Does he also feel guilty?

* * *

For such a dreaded condition, Falling Down was a boring experience.

The beginning was the worst, of course. Waking up to find that they couldn't move their body felt like something from a nightmare, and their siblings' desperate efforts to rouse them were upsetting. They wished there was some way to apologize for that.

But otherwise, it had been such a long time since Luna particularly wanted to move that the condition didn't give them any real sense of loss. If it wasn't for their siblings, and for the boredom, they wouldn't care at all. It wasn't like this was any different from being killed by a human or starving or dying some other way, in the end, and they'd never done anything very interesting or important in their life. They weren't brave like some of their other family members had been, so it wasn't like they'd even cared much about doing such things. In a way, it only made sense that Luna would eventually just Fall Down.

This was about the point where Cabbage would tell them to stop talking about morbid things that didn't help anyone. But they couldn't talk, only think, and their elder sibling wasn't here right now anyway.

They had said they were going to get some sort of help before completely vanishing, and then a long time passed, until Queen Alphys eventually showed up and brought Luna to her lab. But Cabbage hadn't come back with her and she never said anything about them, which made it seem like the two events were not related.

They hoped Cabbage would come back soon, or maybe Reaper Bird, or both. The latter wasn't much for conversation these days, but Luna wasn't either, so they wouldn't have complained even if they could. Their eldest sibling's presence was reassurance enough.

But Reaper Bird was at the house, and Cabbage was somewhere else, and for the first time in their life, Luna was alone. They didn't think they liked it much. Even if it didn't really matter since they were going to die soon anyway, it didn't feel natural at all.

\---

The doors whirred open, and the sound of clicking claws told Luna that Queen Alphys was finally back. With nothing to do except listen, they tried to visualize the room and piece together its contents within their mind.

They mentally placed their cot in the very center of the room, with the foot of the bed facing towards the door, where Queen Alphys now stood. There was a table with drawers—Alphys had been opening and closing them earlier that day—off to their left, and there was a sink off to their right because they'd heard her washing her hands. There was a funny buzzing noise coming from the ceiling, which was probably the lights, but they knew from memory that those lights weren't very bright.

The air was cool and a little moldy, but didn't smell strongly enough to be pleasant or unpleasant. It just was what it was.

Alphys walked around the cot along the left side and opened a drawer, taking something out. She set it down, crossed the room, and turned on the sink. It sounded like she was washing her hands again, but Luna didn't know what she'd taken out of the drawer and wasn't clever enough to guess what it was. Maybe medicine of some sort? She'd said that she planned to help them, which was why she'd brought them here, but she hadn't done anything yet. Was that what she was doing now, or was she just going to leave again?

Queen Alphys moved closer to Luna's cot, until they could hear the sound of her breathing and knew she was standing over them. They would have squirmed or fled or possibly cried under normal circumstances, but they couldn't even open their eyes to see her. It was probably for the best, that way, though they still wished they could ask where Cabbage had gone.

They felt their arm being lifted up, and something wet scraping across what would be their bicep if they had anything even slightly resembling muscle mass there. Their skin felt cold as she set their arm back down, and the air smelled poisonous. Some kind of cleaning wipe? Or was that the medicine? Or maybe she'd licked them. It wasn't like they actually knew what a lizard tongue felt like.

For once, they  _really_ wished Cabbage was here to redirect their line of thinking.

Alphys picked their arm back up, then let it drop. From the sound of it, she then took a step back, and then her breath audibly hitched. She was quiet after that, so much so that they wouldn't have known she was here if they didn't already. They wondered what she was thinking about. This wasn't the first time the queen had cured people who'd Fallen Down, so maybe she was thinking about that. Maybe she was planning to turn them into an Amalgam, like Reaper Bird.

With no way to verify any of their guesses, Luna's curiosity soon faded back into calm acceptance. Whatever she did ( _if_  she really did anything) they were completely at her mercy for the rest of their probably-short life. So there wasn't any point to caring, apart from the distraction these thoughts provided them.

But they soon found themselves distracted from their would-be distraction by a sharp burst of pain in their upper arm, as though they'd been stabbed by something small and pointy. A needle? Alphys' hands shook as she pulled the maybe-needle back out, and then there was a clatter, as though she'd dropped it on the floor. Her breathing was loud and sounded even funnier than before.

Before Luna could feel frightened, or upset, or just decide that they still didn't care, the pain in their arm faded, replaced by a warm sensation that swirled and coiled under their exoskeleton. As Alphys shuffled around on the floor to (so they guessed) retrieve her needle, the warmth crept up to Luna's shoulder and down towards their fingertips. They hadn't been uncomfortably cold underneath their blanket up until now, but the new feeling was still nice.

" _ALPHYS!!_ "

Whatever brief moment of peace she might have given them was shattered as a distant scream echoed down the hallway. Alphys gasped, was silent for a brief second, then dropped the needle and scrambled out of the room.

The door slid shut behind the queen and the sound of her footsteps faded. Luna hadn't even known that someone else was down here, but apparently there was. And from the sound of things, something very bad had just happened, though they didn't have any idea what it might have been.

As the gentle hazy warmth spread through their chest and out towards the rest of their body, Luna hoped that the other person in the lab was all right.

\---

Alphys stumbled out of the elevator and nearly dropped her phone, fumbling to get her surveillance camera app open despite her shaky hands and racing heart.

Monsters turned to dust when they died, but finding dust didn't necessarily mean a monster was dead. If they were gravely injured, and especially if they lost a body part like a hand or a leg, there would be dust.

Sans had once alluded to some vague condition that made him more "breakable" than most people. If that was true, then even a minor mishap could mean dust. So he was probably fine. He was smart, much smarter than she was, in every way that mattered. Whatever else happened, Sans was fine.

Undyne, though—she was only just recovering from the effects of leaving her tank for the first time, and wouldn't have been in any condition to defend herself anyway. Alphys certainly hadn't  _tested_ how well an Amalgamate's defenses measured up to a normal monster, and didn't have a good frame of reference for gauging their strength, but she couldn't imagine that being melted and disoriented would do Undyne any favors in a crisis.

Alphys gripped her phone and forced herself to take a deep breath in, then out. Panicking would do nothing to help. If something was wrong and her friends were in harm's way, she could do something about that, but panicking would not help.

Once the app finally opened, she switched rapidly between cameras, giving each perspective a brief glance before jumping to the next.

The doors to the RUINS were still sealed shut.

A few rabbit monsters were passing through Snowdin, but she saw no sign of her friends.

Waterfall was quiet and nearly empty as this point, as was most of Hotland.

She lowered her phone, rubbing her eyes under her glasses and forcing herself to think. Though she'd been trying not to think about it in the hopes that the problem would just sort of go away, she knew that someone had warned (threatened?) that she and Undyne might be in some sort of danger. Maybe someone had attacked them, injuring Sans in the process—that was when she heard him scream. Then he must have grabbed Undyne and fled. That must have been how his hoodie got all wet, and then he ended up losing it somehow. That made sense. Kind of.

Unless... maybe he was even more serious about the things he'd said to her in the throne room than she'd realized. He'd said that Undyne was better off outside the tank (even though she  _wasn't_ ) and then later offered to check up on her while Alphys dealt  with the Whimsun. Then he might have forcibly taken Undyne somewhere. 

...That was ridiculous. Even if she was still angry, that explanation went against everything she knew about Sans' behavior.

Alphys' expression clouded as she scrolled through the different cameras. Nothing unusual seemed to be happening in the capital either, as far as she could see.

Could they still be in the lab? She'd looked around, and called out, but there hadn't been any sign of them. Maybe she'd missed them. Or maybe they were literally anywhere else, and she'd  _still_ missed them; though the cameras allowed her to watch over large portions of the Underground, they weren't everywhere. There was the Core, for example, though Sans disliked the place and probably wouldn't have gone there. She couldn't see into any houses or other buildings either, since getting all those extra cameras installed would be both impractical and incredibly creepy.

Eyes glued on her phone screen, Alphys continued flicking between camera perspectives as she wandered slowly towards the lab's entrance. With Sans' ability to instantly travel from one place to another, he and Undyne could be literally anywhere in the Underground.

Alphys stopped, and chewed at her claw, and considered that. Outside of the occasional creepy-voiced prank call, Alphys had never heard Sans speak in anything louder than a mumbled half-whisper. He'd have to be scared out of his mind to  _scream_ for help, and if there was some kind of danger present, she didn't think he would run away and leave her behind on purpose.

If something terrible happened, and she was Sans, and terrified, where would she go to for refuge?

Alphys put away her phone and hurried out of the lab, towards the Riverperson's dock.

\---

"Tra la la. Beware of the angel. . . or maybe not. It really doesn't matter," the Riverperson sang as their boat drifted to a halt.

"R-right, thanks!" Alphys hardly even waited for the boat to stop before jumping out, wincing as her bare feet sank ankle-deep into the snow. Snowdin was the one place where she usually bothered with footwear (not to mention copious numbers of hand-warmers in her coat pockets) but that would have meant going all the way back to New Home to retrieve them, so that obviously wasn't going to happen.

She picked her way through the snow, running faster once she reached the main path where it had been packed down tight, and for once she was grateful for her heavy robes. There was only so much they could do for her since she didn't generate her own body heat, but at least the thick layers of fabric served as insulation. After coming directly from Hotland, she would be all right as long as she moved fast.

Alphys scurried past a few small houses plus the libra—well, libra _rby_ , apparently—trying to ignore the numbness in the soles of her feet. She slowed as she reached Sans and Papyrus' house, standing up on her toes to try and peer in through the windows. The curtains were drawn and the lights were off, just as they'd been for the past several months. Her heart sank, but she knocked on the door anyway.

"H-h-hello? Sans?" she called out, waited, then knocked again with a bit more force. She tried opening the door when that didn't accomplish anything, but it was locked. Of course it was.

"Yo, lady! If you're looking for one of those skeletons, then..." a painfully familiar child's voice called out.

The monster kid shuffled back as Alphys turned to face them, their warm breath puffing out in little clouds around their face. They had to be some sort of dinosaur-monster instead of a lizard like Alphys, she guessed. Which meant that they would be perfectly comfortable running around in a place like Snowdin. Or, say, Waterfall.

Their eyes fell on the Delta Rune across the front of their robe. And then the look on her face.

"Oh. Oh man, uh, I didn't know you, um..." the kid stammered.

"H-have you s-seen S-Sans recently?" Alphys asked through uselessly chattering teeth, feeling the warmth in her body slowly leaching away.

The kid backed off from Alphys. "That's the short one, right? ...Uh, well, it's gotta be him since, um... ...no. I dunno where he is."

Alphys nodded and turned away, mentally daring the kid to say anything again. It was cruel and it was unfair to hold anything against them, and she knew Undyne wouldn't approve, but Undyne was a better person than Alphys. In any case, the kid didn't say anything, though she could feel them still watching her.

By the time she passed the library/librarby a second time, her body temperature had begun to equalize so that she could hardly feel the cold, which would be a good thing right up until it wasn't. She tried to make herself walk faster.

Snowdin was quieter than she remembered, though she'd only been here with Sans a few times. Several families moved away after the human came, particularly those with young children, settling in Waterfall or the capital and leaving their old homes abandoned. No more presents sat under the tree in the center of town, but apparently there were enough regulars still around for Grillby's to stay open, and the colorful lights strung across the "WELCOME TO SNOWDIN" sign were as bright as ever. Alphys peeked into the window of the restaurant (and made incredibly awkward eye contact with an inebriated-looking rabbit monster in the process) just to be sure before heading out of town completely.

Alphys hugged her arms around herself as she picked her way through the knee-high snow, going as far as the bridge leading towards Snowdin Woods before she stopped. Unless Sans accidentally overshot by a long distance, there was no reason for him to have gone past this point. There was nothing for anyone here; just a few scattered, unmanned sentry posts and the silent forest. And nowhere to hide, either, but Sans could have told her that. Alphys tried to check her cameras again, but her hands were too cold and shaky to use her phone very well.

It seems so logical that Sans would be here, except that he wasn't. And neither was Undyne.

Were they hurt? In danger? Was anyone else in danger as well, from whatever had threatened her friends? At this point she would have been overjoyed to find out it was all some weird, over-elaborate joke, if only Sans had left Undyne out of it.

Snow crunched underfoot as Alphys walked back across the town and towards Sans and Papyrus' house, then past it. The scales on her exposed hands and feet were darkened to an ugly muddy color as her body attempted to absorb sunlight that wasn't here. As she passed the opposite edge of town, the snow fell heavier, then lighter, then  _finally_ not at all, giving way to dark stone at Waterfall's entrance.

A few patches of slush remained here and there, but she was no longer in Snowdin proper when she finally found what she was looking for. Part of it, at least.

The rest of Sans' clothing lay in a little heap; against the dark-blue rock and thin patches of snow, she could see how she might have easily missed the black shorts and white tee shirt as she looked through the surveillance footage. Both clothing items were covered in faint gray streaks in places, but it was his white shirt that seemed to have borne the brunt of... something. It looked like it had been torn open.

Alphys dropped the mangled shirt and edged around it towards Waterfall, noting a conspicuous absence of dust-piles anywhere in between. Sans' clothes were stained, but he was always pretty messy. He also wasn't  _wearing_ them, but there had to be some kind of reason for that.

The last thing she'd said to him... she couldn't exactly remember now. He'd made some stupid joke which sort of made her laugh, but she'd still been angry even though she knew it wasn't entirely fair. She'd have to make sure to apologize later, but first she'd have to find Sans and Undyne. They'd been here just a little while ago, and there was no dust.

Waterfall wasn't exactly warm, but it wasn't Snowdin either. Once her fingers warmed up and regained enough feeling for her to trust them, Alphys carefully pulled out her phone and scrolled through the different camera perspectives within Waterfall, starting from the room in which she now stood and working her way forward. 

Then her phone was back in her pocket, and she was running.

 ---

The echo flowers made noises as Alphys passed them by. She didn't know what else to else to call them; it didn't sound exactly like crying, or breathing, though they were sort of close. It didn't sound like anything that should have come from a person's mouth.

But at least it confirmed that she was headed in the right direction.

Alphys wasn't build for long-distance running any more than she was built for cold or damp, and she kept tripping over the hem of her too-long robe every few steps. But at last the tunnel widened again, and Alphys stumbled to a half at the edge of a shadow-filled cavern.

She'd passed this way a few times with Undyne, who'd already memorized the way through and never bothered with the lanterns or crystals you were supposed to use. Otherwise, Alphys used to just travel on the Riverperson's boat when she wanted to visit her friend or check out the garbage dump for new anime, instead of trying to bumble her way through here like an idiot. But from what she could tell, Undyne had been headed in this direction, and didn't go any farther.

Alphys took a deep breath with the intention of calling out, took two steps forward, and promptly bashed her shin against the nearest lantern. She yelped and nearly fell, but at least it had the convenient side-effect of lighting up the entrance of the room. Not enough for her to see a lot, but enough to... not do much of anything mess up the night-vision camera in this room. Hooray.

She fumbled around for her phone and switched on the flashlight function, holding it out in front of her as she moved further into the cavern.

"U-Undyne? Where a—"

Hardly two words in, something or some _one_ much larger and heavier than Alphys slammed into her stomach, knocking the wind out of her as she dropped back into the dirt. What would have been a pained yelp came out as a weak gasp, and Alphys instinctively flailed out

A    B    S    O    R    B    E    D

B    u    t          i    t          d    i    d    n    ‘    t          w    o     r    k

F    A    I    L    U    R    E

her vision distorted, somehow turning even darker than before. Her phone's screen flashed red among the reeds and marsh-water, then died, though she didn't even remember dropping it. The weight pressing down against her chest shifted forward, and she blinked as two points of light shone down in her face—two glowing eyes, or something close.

The heavy weight pushed even harder before disappearing, and she heard a wet smack that brought to mind an oversized Froggit jumping around. Alphys wheezed as she sat back up, reflecting in a daze that if Undyne could move around so fast, then maybe she wasn't in such bad physical condition after all. She started to get up, then thought better of it and crouched lower, tail curled around her body in an effort to make herself smaller. Her phone was gone and she couldn't see anything, and she still wasn't sure what just occurred or why, so it seemed best to stay put and wait for whatever might be coming.

Undyne let out a breathy rasping noise from the other side of the cavern.

Even with the thick fabric of her sleeves to cushion them, Alphys' elbows ached where they'd banged against her floor. Her head, too. She rose up a little and glanced back over her shoulder to the lantern, now some distance away and glowing only dimly. The tunnel behind it was bright in comparison tot he cavern, illuminated by echo flowers and the occasional gem embedded in the wall. Alphys rested the damp palm of one hand against the back of her head, no doubt getting mud all over herself. But it did help a little.

"Undyne?"

She could still hear Undyne some distance away. Alphys got up onto her knees and felt around the floor, trying to remember where exactly her phone had fallen. Her hand splashed into a slimy puddle, and she wiped it clean against the grass before inching along further. She went on feeling around until she finally located the phone, running her fingers across the screen. It was cracked. Since the phone was wet, trying to power it back on might not be the best idea, so she slipped it back into her pocket instead.

"U-Undyne? Where are you?"

Her breath was completely back now, and speaking shouldn't have taken any effort than usual.

"...W-where i-is Sans?"

Still no answer. Alphys got back up, shivering a little, and limped her way across the marshy ground. The glowing crystals gave out dark pink auras too weak to provide much light, but she kept moving carefully towards the rasping sound until she found its source.

"Undyne?!"

Considering the results of Undyne leaving her tank several days earlier, Alphys had expected to find her friend in an even further-deteriorated state than before. But the outline of her body was a sharply defined silhouette even in the weak glow of the crystals, and from what Alphy could tell, Undyne looked—not normal, exactly, but solid, and so much  _like_ herself that Alphys wondered if maybe she was seeing it wrong somehow. Like wishful thinking.

If Alphys was just imagining what she wanted to see, though, then Undyne wouldn't be crouching on the floor with her head in her hands, mumbling something that Alphys couldn't quite understand. She reached out, changed her mind, and stayed just out of arm's reach of Undyne. It seemed like what she'd prefer.

"Are you hurt? Undyne, w-what happened?" Alphys asked again. At this point she would have settled for any sign that Undyne was even listening, but there was nothing. Just the way it had been with her last several attempts.

"I'm... not... going back. I... I'm not... going... back," Undyne hissed, coughing and shuddering in place. "...N-not... going back... again."

Alphys swallowed hard and laced her fingers tightly together, resting her hands on her lap. They still hurt a little, and maybe it was just her low body temperature getting to her at last, but she didn't have any idea what to say.

"I'm s-sorry."

Somewhere in a far-off corner, she could hear water drip down from the ceiling.

"I heard Sans call out, i-i-in th-the lab," Alphys began, and then hesitated. But Undyne didn't react.

"W-where is he? And... and what happened? W-was someone there, or... w-was there an accident? P-please, y-you can just... j-just please tell me."

There was still no answer.

" _P_ _-please_."

Undyne lowered her head further. Finally, not really caring if it provoked her once-friend into jumping at her again, Alphys walked around and knelt in front of her. She looked up, and finally Alphys got a somewhat decent look at Undyne's face.

Except it wasn't her face, not really. Undyne's body was solid, more solid than it had been since her death, but it didn't look right. Her body was still the dull off-white of an Amalgamate, rather than the vibrant jewel-like blue her scales had once been, and the scars along her back and arms were all gone. The ones which were usually hidden by her eye patch were gone, too. But more than that, the proportions of her face, her hands as Undyne lowered them and pressed them against the ground, her short, pointed ear-fins, her expression—Alphys had memorized all these features nearly as well as her own, and they weren't _right_.

Alphys' cheeks burned as she averted her eyes, because Undyne also happened to be completely naked. Of course, that had been the normal state of things for ages so it wasn't exactly a surprise, but it hadn't mattered so much when she was all melted. Undyne looked down at herself as well, blank-faced for a minute, as if only just now noticing as well. The outline of Undyne's body distorted, the skin along her torso sloughing away, and Alphys found herself staring despite herself.

What had been Undyne's skin darkened and shifted, wrapping itself back around her body to form a sleeveless dress that would reach a little above her knees if she stood up.

Undyne slumped down a little, as if the change had required a much greater effort than it looked. She raised her head again, a dim pinpoint of light gleaming from her uncovered eye socket.

"I... want to... go home," said an empty voice that was almost Undyne's, but wasn't.

Alphys didn't try to argue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: it's changed pretty drastically from its original form, but the main portion of this chapter was going to be the story's ending back when I intended for it to just be a two-shot. Well, so much for that!
> 
> This is my last day of summer vacation before classes start back up again, so updates will unfortunately take even longer than they do already, but they _are_ coming.  
>  As always, comments make me real happy, and help give me a sense of what's working so far and what I maybe should change or clarify. Because I have no idea what I'm doing here, hooray! :D


	11. I See Two Lovers

ENTRY NUMBER 02:

* Construction around the barrier entry points has been completed.  
* I recruited some of the surviving Madjiks to reinforce the magic seal on the door to the RUINS.  
* And the entrance into the throne room is blocked off as well.  
* Even if nobody's getting out any time soon, nobody's getting in here, either.

* * *

The ragged ends of Undyne's hair trailed a little past her shoulders, tinted pink in the light of the nearest crystal. Her shortened ear-fins drooped.

"O-okay, then," Alphys said. "Let's go th-there."

Aside from the fact that she didn't want to tell Undyne  _no_ , Undyne's house would be a good place to be right now. Until Alphys could figure out just what had happened and what her friend's overall mental state might be, loitering around a cavern that people might try to pass through might end badly.

Undyne's fingers splayed out like claws, digging into the muddy dirt. "I'm not... going back."

"Okay. I should check j-just to make sure that, um, everything is okay, b-but that doesn't need to be at the lab. Or... r-right now, I guess," Alphys answered. In the times she'd imagined Undyne returning, she always went right back to being in charge and knowing how to fix everything, but getting half of what she wanted was a improvement over the last experiments.

Alphys brushed her hands compulsively against her skirt as she waited, but Undyne didn't follow suit in getting up. Her hair hid her face from this angle, but the two pale hands pressed against the ground had the roughly inexact quality of a carved figure. Her thoughts turned to that final, precious vial she'd forced herself to use on another monster only a few minutes earlier.

Despite the details of her appearance, though, Undyne was close enough to herself that she registered as  _Undyne_ and not  _Amalgamate_  when Alphys looked at her. She was Undyne, and with or without that last bit of Determination, she was alive _._  Alphys was not going to lose her friend now that her goal was in sight. That monster in the lab was safe where they were, and Sans... Sans was like a cat, he'd wander back home whenever he felt like it. He was fine. Whatever else happened, whatever might have left Undyne so upset, Sans was always fine.

"You wanted to go now, right?" Alphys prompted, debating whether or not to offer a hand. Undyne was normally  _way_ too tough to need or accept that kind of help. She never even let people hold doors open for her when her arms were full, which might have been why she used to always kick doors (or sometimes kick them  _down_ ) instead of knocking on them like a normal person.

"Because if you want to leave, th-then you. Um. Kind of need to move?" Alphys paused, and listened. It didn't sound like anyone was in the tunnels nearby. "Unless there's something you want me to do f-first? Though in that case, y-you'd still need to tell me."

Alphys waited.

Were it not for the dress Undyne had made, or—grown, or whatever it was—she almost would have wondered if Undyne could see or hear her. She never used to ignore Alphys, not ever, until she became an Amalgamate. And even then, she'd been a whole lot more obvious about it than this.

Something bad must have happened around when she returned to herself, something involving Sans, but Alphys could not think about what could have led to such a drastic change in behavior for Undyne. She didn't even look like an Amalgamate anymore. Shouldn't that have represented a positive change..?

At the worst, she'd just ask Sans about it later. That was all.

"It's okay to not feel well, if that's w-what it is. If I were you, I would f-feel really tired, probably..." Alphys said, but Undyne gave no answer except a short bark that might have been a laugh.

For someone who'd spent a good portion of her teen years being laughed at, it hurt worse than it should have. At least this meant Undyne knew what she was saying after all. "Sorry."

When the waiting got to be too much, Alphys gathered her courage, knelt back down, and reached out to take Undyne's hands. "S-so, let's just go now."

Her fingers were pleasantly warm despite the mud encrusted under her nails and smeared across her palms, but Undyne tore her hand away from Alphys' as though the touch had burned her. She hugged her arms around her midsection as if trying to keep them away.

"O-okay! Okay, sorry, if y-you don't want me to do that then j-just TELL me," Alphys found herself snapping. She stopped for a moment to gather herself. "Sorry. W-we just... should go. That's what you wanted, isn't it?"

After what felt like a geological age and a half, Undyne nodded, shakily pushing herself back up to her feet. She appeared a little shorter than she'd been, or maybe it was just Alphys' imagination plus her posture. It was worrying either way, but at least she  _could_ get up okay.

Alphys squinted in the crystal's weak light, trying to recall where the nearest lantern was supposed to be. Quickly giving up, she faced towards the doorway through which she'd and shuffled towards that. Undyne trailed silently after her, pale and ghostly in the dark.

\---

The area around Undyne's home was unchanged by the human's arrival and all that had happened afterwards, aside from being quieter and smelling different. The pond reeked of sweet lemons with a chemical edge, as though someone had dumped gallons of cleaning spray straight into the water. Undyne grimaced, giving Alphys a sideways look.

"L-Lemon Bread," Alphys supplied, then nearly smacked herself upside the head when Undyne's confused expression remained in place. The Amalgamates had all been free for months, but Undyne wouldn't know that, much less any of their newly-chosen names. Even if Alphys told her while she was still an Amalgamate herself, she wouldn't remember.

"You haven't met her, but she likes to swim here. She must have recently been nearby."

How Alphys would know a resident of Waterfall that Undyne didn't, she couldn't have explained, but Undyne showed little interest in responding. In the water's reflection her eye was empty and unfocused, the socket beside it hidden by her lank hair.

Alphys edged closer to the fish-monster's side, trying to nudge her along without actually touching her. If Undyne was truly healed then she would need to get caught up on everything that had happened, Amalgamates included, but Lemon Bread wasn't likely to make a good first impression. At least the others were just odd and slightly creepy, not mean-spirited. Or articulate.

Undyne ignored her efforts, standing rooted at the water's side. "What... is that?"

Alphys leaned forward on her toes to look into the water, eager to go along with Undyne's first real effort at actually speaking to her. She anticipated a distorted face popping up at any instant, but saw nothing except for her own reflection at the water's surface and a few pebbles resting below it. "What's what?"

" _That._ "

Alphys looked again. There were a few snail-shell fragments along with the pebbles. The water glowed a little, which was partially the bioluminescent grasses at its edge and partially the gem fragments embedded in the walls. If she tilted her head just right, she could almost detect a glint of yellow light against the water, but she couldn't be sure she'd seen it herself, let alone Undyne.

"You, ahh, are probably really tired, right? Let's keep g-going," Alphys urged. Undyne ignored then as well, moving as though to kneel by the water, and the thought of what would happen if Lemon-Bread decided to show up now didn't quite fill her with hope.

Alphys slipped her hand through the crook of Undyne's elbow and tugged. Undyne's breath came out as a hiss as she tried to pull away, arm sliding through Alphys' hand until the smaller monster's fingers encircled her wrist instead. Undyne's scales always used to feel damp, covered in a thin slimy layer, but now they were dry and dull and nearly colorless.

She gently tugged Undyne in the direction of her house, which worked for roughly three seconds before Undyne regained her balance enough to pull back. She did so with nearly enough force to pull Alphys off her feet, and more than enough to end up stumbling herself. Alphys yelped and sprang forward, wrapping her other arm around Undyne's waist before she could fall. "C-careful!"

" _Don't_ ," Undyne growled, folding her arms back around herself as Alphys shrank away.

"S-sorry, I just wanted to... ...n-nevermind."

At least she'd succeeded in distracting Undyne from whatever she'd found so distracting. Speaking of which, the ground at Alphys' feet was  _very_ interesting all of a sudden, and remained that way until Undyne finally looked away. Alphys followed at her heels as she walked along the path, glad that Undyne at least hadn't yet complained about her coming along.

"We— er, well, Sans— he came here a long time ago to get rid of your garbage, s-so it wouldn't smell, but otherwise nobody's touched anything," Alphys ventured. Undyne walked on as though she hadn't heard a syllable, though she glanced aside to the empty spot where her training dummy had once stood.

Alphys pushed the festering worry and frustration in her SOUL aside, pretended not to see it. She had exactly what she'd wanted, and Sans was most assuredly fine, and there was no reason for her to get angry at anyone.

The front door slid open and Undyne passed through. Alphys hurried after her, the end of her tail nearly getting pinched as the door snapped back shut. It was one of the dangers in having a house shaped like a fish, with a fangy-looking door to match.

Undyne flicked on the lights, grimaced, and quickly switched them back off with her eye squeezed shut. The gems along the the walls outside the window bathed the house's interior in soft blue light, revealing it to be just as untouched as Alphys had promised. A book of sheet music still sat on its stand at the piano, while the "anime sword" Alphys once helped her construct was leaned up against the kitchen table. A tea-stained mug sat abandoned in the sink, while a little pink plate rested in the drying rack next to the faucet. Suffice to say, it was dry by now.

She took in the room without a sound, leaving Alphys with the unsettling feeling of being appraised. Judged. She really hadn't touched anything; this was the first she'd seen of the house since Undyne died.

Undyne went to the piano, bracing one hand against the scratched wood. Making her way around it, she sat down heavily at the bench to face the keys, hands in her lap. Her hair slipped back down from her shoulder and hung limply.

"Um. Maybe it would be a good idea to take a rest? I c-can make you some tea if you want," Alphys offered. "Or... if y-you're angry, y-you can say so."

Alphys dug her claws into her wrist from behind her back.

"Please say something."

The piano bench's wooden feet screeched and bumped against the floor as Undyne stood back up and pushed it clumsily aside, bare feet pattering against the floor as she crossed the room. Her bedroom door swung shut behind her.

Alphys stuffed her hand into her mouth and bit down on it, fumbling for her cell phone with her free hand. She began to tap out Sans' number through muscle memory alone—however badly she'd messed up, there had to be something he could do to help, he'd always. . .

She glanced down.

The screen was still darkened, flecked with mud. if getting dropped in a puddle hadn't killed it then trying to turn it on probably had, and without her toolbox on-hand there wasn't much to be done about the problem. Alphys dropped her phone on Undyne's kitchen table and clamped her teeth down on her fingers until she couldn't stand it anymore.

He'd all but  _warned_ her that he was planning to do something, and she'd let him back into the lab, let him go near Undyne by himself. What was she thinking? Alphys knew Undyne better than Sans did, both in her friend's true form and as an Amalgamate. Why had she been letting Sans interact with her at all?

But Sans' cell phone was most likely still in his hoodie pocket, she'd forgotten that. Down in the lab, where he'd left it. After doing whatever unwise thing that he did, he'd left his hoodie in the lab. Even if her phone was working, the signal wouldn't have gone through. With no signal, he couldn't answer the phone, but he couldn't answer anyway because he was somewhere else right now.

That was all.

She wiped her hand on her skirt and turned to the door Undyne had gone through. Even with the small amount of bravery the past few months might have taught her, she couldn't have said what she would have done if Undyne outright told her to go away. But she hadn't.

"Undyne?" Alphys called out, tapping her knuckle against the door just once before getting too nervous and stopping. When that still failed to get an answer, she pushed the door open and entered.

Much like the rest of the house, Undyne's room was exactly as she'd left it, down to the shelf full of borrowed manga volumes, the fish-patterned curtains, and the row of throwing knives next to the makeup case on Undyne's dresser. With the only window facing pointlessly out to bare rock just a foot or so away, it was nearly as dark as the true lab. ...Alphys never did get around to asking why that window was even there.

Undyne sat on the edge of her bed, clutching the Mew Mew plushie Alphys had given her the year before, staring down at its little iron-on smile. That wasn't exactly what Alphys had been expecting, but she supposed it was better than finding Undyne with one of those knives in her hand. Or naked.

"It's okay if you're angry with me for... keeping you in the lab. Or, or anything else. I understand. But I still want to make sure that you aren't hurt," Alphys said.

Undyne tossed Mew Mew aside and slid forward, planting her feet firmly on the floor. Her pale scales all but glowed in the dark.

"He never hurt me. He couldn't... even when he... had a reason."

Alphys didn't know how to answer that. Was Undyne referring to Sans?

"...But I only did it because I had no choice. Neither of you... gave me a choice. And everything hurt. If you think I'm... weak, for that, I don't care anymore."

Undyne's hands clamped down on the edge of the bed until it seemed like she might rip something. Then her hands went slack. Her voice was flat, a little sad, in a way that Alphys had never heard before. Not from Undyne, at least.

"I'm not... really sure what you're talking about? But I don't think anything like that, I-I never have!" Alphys said. It took everything she had not to reach out and hug Undyne; her friend wouldn't have liked it. She'd just push her away again, and Alphys would deserve it. "I know that I a-always screw up, but... I've been trying to help you all along. You know that, don't you? I've n-never thought you were weak, or... anything bad."

"Yeah. I..." Undyne began, then frowned to herself and lapsed into silence. Finally she scooted back, away from the edge of the bed, and drew her knees up against her chest. Her bare legs must have been cold.

"...What are you gonna do about... what I did?"

"Do you mean when y-you, um, knocked me down?" Alphys asked. "B-because I'm not mad about that! You were sick, th-the way you were, a-a-and you didn't know what was going on, right? It wasn't your fault if I surprised y-you, or something like that."  

"Alphys."

There was no cruelty in Undyne's voice, and no kindness either. Alphys shivered. It had nothing to do with the temperature in the room, or the snow she'd walked through just a short while earlier.

"I killed Sans. As soon as I discovered what I can do... and what his dust would do... I killed him. He was faster than I'd expected, and I had to keep trying. I knew what I was doing."

Alphys had heard him scream. Found his torn-up hoodie, and his clothes lying in the snow, smudged with gray. But what Undyne was trying to admit to... it wasn't possible. It wasn't true. It couldn't be. Sans was fine. He was  _always_ fine. And if he wasn't, then whose fault would it really be?

He couldn't be gone.

"Undyne, d-don't say things like th-that. It—it isn't funny."

"The royal guard will need to know," Undyne continued, as if she hadn't heard a word of what Alphys said. "As... as well as..."

She stopped again, frowning as she studied Alphys as if for the first time. Her gaze lingered on the Delta Rune embroidered over her chest.

"Why are you... wearing that?"

"B-because—" Alphys looked down at herself, and the Rune. At the winged circle and the little triangles beneath it. The angel who'd seen the surface, returning to free Monsterkind. Some prophecy _that_ was.

And then it was all too much for her again; her throat felt tight, and there was nothing she could have done to keep her voice from quivering. She didn't try.

"Because King Asgore is dead. A-a-and all of the guard, a-and you, y-you were dead too, and M-M-Mettaton and Sans' b-brother a-a-and... there wasn't anybody else left. Sans d-didn't want to rule, e-even though I offered to let him..."

Now he was gone too, if Undyne was telling anything resembling the truth. And either it was all Alphys' fault, or Undyne really had  _killed_ her only other friend and it was still her fault anyway for allowing it to happen.

"I j-just... I m-missed you," Alphys quavered. "I didn't mean f-for any of th-this to happen."

Her glasses were fogging up. Alphys pulled them off, hands shaking so badly that she nearly dropped them on the floor.

Undyne let out a sigh, and the bedframe softly creaked as she stood up. Her hands were warm as they looped around Alphys' waist, even through the heavy layers of her robes. Alphys started in surprise before clinging desperately to her friend, expecting at any moment to be shoved away again.

That moment didn't come. Undyne was rigid in Alphys' arms, but she allowed her to bury her face into her neck and cry without complaint. After a minute, the arm around Alphys' waist tightened as Undyne lifted her up and carried her over to the foot of her bed, sitting back down with the smaller monster curled up on her lap.

Alphys sniffled and pressed her cheek against her friend's shoulder as Undyne gently rubbed her back with her free hand. She felt so warm, and while her bright blue scales were long-gone, there was a faintly pearly sheen to their replacements that Alphys hadn't even noticed at first.

She reached up to touch Undyne's  arm, with its faintly shining scales, then lost her nerve and pulled her hand away. Guilt wormed its way through Alphys' SOUL no matter how she tried to ignore it. Sans was maybe dead, and it was her fault. No matter what precisely had happened, or how, it was her fault. And it was her fault that something had gone wrong, and Undyne wasn't happy. She had no right to have this moment.

But she didn't care. She didn't  _want_ to care.

And she didn't want to let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you know that one phrase, "done is better than perfect"...?
> 
> I was also listening to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdXTqxTWxcM) about 5000 times while attempting to get this chapter done, (I wanted to post it by the 15th but that sure didn't happen /sob) and now it's inextricably linked with this chapter in my brain.


	12. That's Not True, Right..?!

~~ENTRY NUMBER 0000:~~

~~* SOUL POWER IS WITHIN ACCEPTABLE PARAMETERS~~  
~~* COGNITIVE FUNCTION STILL UNKNOWN~~  
~~* THE EXPERIMENT...~~  
~~* ...~~  
~~* SOON, VERY SOON.~~

* * *

Undyne remained exactly as Alphys left her, sitting on the bed's edge.

Through the door she could hear the kitchen faucet squeak and the water hiss against metal. The fabric of the quilt on her bed felt scratchy against her hands; it felt both wonderful and a little overwhelming.

She felt... good. She was back in her old home, and the extra dust made the pain almost disappear, made it easier to assume a complicated form without it all just melting away. Without pain, she could focus properly, and with clear focus she could remember how her body was supposed to look, supposed to move. And that, in turn, made it easier to remember other things.

It felt so good that she didn't even care about whatever fate awaited her. The royal guard would find her, or she would find them, and there would be justice for what she did.

Alphys had told her that the guards were dead, all dead, but she'd also said that Undyne died, and so she had. A hundred times over, a luminous red SOUL floating over a dead friend's body before it shattered and all went dark. They fought. Again. It repeated. One time she grabbed them and sent them both tumbling down towards the cavern floor far beneath the bridge.

There'd been other close calls. That first evening on the surface wasn't what anyone expected, humans included. But she was alive now. . .

So the royal guard would find her. She'd lose her title, definitely. Probably face questioning. Imprisonment. But she already had what she wanted, mostly, so she didn't care.

Her back tingled as if an unseen monster was staring at her, but she ignored the feeling as she ran her hands across the top of the quilt.

 

The room brightened and darkened as Alphys pushed the door shut with her hip, cutting off the light flooding in with her from the kitchen.

"Here's your tea. I just, um, picked one kind at random. But th-that's okay, right?" Alphys said, the individual words carrying less meaning than the desperate, hopeful way she said them.

Undyne felt a weak impulse to grab Alphys by the arm and beg for help, an impulse that wasn't her own. She ignored it, just like she'd ignored the attempts to take control away from her, and the pleas to  _go back go back, just go back_.

She ran her thumb across the top of the quilt and waited for Alphys to realize she wouldn't get an answer. Eventually Alphys swished past the bed in her too-long robe, setting the cup down on the dresser. "I'll put it here for now. In case you want to drink it later."

"And..." Alphys went on. "I'm sorry about before. I shouldn't have gotten upset like that, and made you have to help... but thank you."

Undyne shrugged, not really looking at her. "S'fine."

Holding Alphys as she'd cried was the right thing to do, even if the feeling of those sharp little claws pricking at her scales nearly drove Undyne to violence or screaming or both. But now she thought it might have been a mistake, even worse than the one she'd nearly made in the cavern. In a way.

"What... about Sans?" Undyne asked.

"Don't worry about that. What happened in the lab wasn't y-your fault, all right? Sans... shouldn't have done with he did."

No. Probably not.

But holding his hand felt good. 

And ripping his arm out of its socket felt even better.

Undyne gripped the quilt until her fingers hurt. Alphys still wasn't listening to her. Maybe she'd listen if Undyne told the whole truth, but then Alphys might think there was something really wrong with Undyne. Something that needed fixing. Nothing good could come of that.

"I killed—"

" _No!_ " Alphys said, lunging towards Undyne and wrapping her arms around her waist. Undyne stiffened, locked between competing impulses to shove Alphys away or hug her back. Once again, doing nothing won out.

"Stop saying that, please," Alphys insisted, tightening her arms around Undyne and pressing her cheek against her stomach. "You c-can't blame yourself for s-something like that. Not now... now that you're here."

Finally Alphys pulled back, eyes shining far too brightly. Movements slow and tentative, she tucked a damp strand of Undyne's hair behind one ear-fin. Undyne thought she could hear a hollow, incredulous laugh, but it wasn't her and it wasn't Alphys.

"I know that a lot has changed, you'll see it soon, but... everything can get better now," Alphys was saying. The silent laughter faded. "A-and that's also true of myself! I'm stronger than I used to be. I c-can protect you."

Undyne stared down at her, dumbfounded. "You wanna... protect me."

Alphys blushed, for some reason.

"Anyway, there's, ahh, something important that I need to take care of. You can just stay here until then, right? It w-won't take very long, and then I'll be right back."

"Sans."

Alphys sighed as if Undyne had disappointed her somehow. "Don't worry about him. Just... stay here and rest for a while."

When no further answer came, Alphys reached for Undyne's hand, lost her nerve, and hurried out of the room. Leaving Undyne alone again.

Sort of.

She combed her fingers through her hair as Alphys rummaged around in the kitchen, mesmerized by the feeling of even _having_ fingers.

Then the other presence nudged against her, like a mental touch to the shoulder, and she realized that the house was quiet. Alphys must have gone.

Not waiting for the voice to resume its pathetic begging, she shuffled around the room in search of her rain boots. It was nice to be back to this place, and it had cleared her head a little, but there was nothing here that could help her. The guard might come, but not soon enough. She needed to find them first, before Alphys returned.

Giving up on finding her boots, she made her unsteady way out of the bedroom and through the house, squinting against the light and not even bothering to shut the front door behind herself. All she needed was to backtrack far enough to find a monster who'd listen to her.

Undyne paused as she reached the next room, leaning against the stone wall. She was back at the quiet place by the pond, where—what was her name?—where  _Shyren_ and her sister used to hang around when they were both still alive. Before the Barrier broke, and everyone went to the surface.

Something like that.

The yellow light in the pond was still there, pulsating and flickering like a living thing, just as it had when it first captured her attention. Except that this time, Alphys wasn't here to drag her away.

Undyne pushed off the wall and approached the edge of the water. Up close the yellow star dazzled her, nearly blinded her, drawing her in like a lure. Why Alphys insisted on ignoring the light, she couldn't comprehend. Not even the harsh lemon smell could keep her away.

Slowly, carefully, she knelt down and reached out as if to scoop up the light in her hands.

There was a flash of white, and then gray, and then a big pale creature slammed into her midsection like an oversized fist. Driven by muscle memory rather than conscious thought, Undyne tucked her head down and threw herself backwards, moving along with her foe's momentum and sending them both tumbling. As they rolled to a stop, She scrambled up and drove her knee into the middle of the gray monster's back, using her body weight to pin them against the floor. Before they could try to grab her, she latched onto their wrist—a quick glance told her that they had only the one arm—and pinned that down as well.

And now she was kneeling on top of a hissing, squirming fish monster seemingly modeled out of gloppy gray clay, the same color as her scales and hair. Behind her back, the monster's short tail thrashed in an ineffectual struggle to dislodge her.

When that didn't work, the monster let out a awful, piercing screech that echoed though the small cavern and hurt to hear.

" _STOP TOUCHING ME_ " " _STOP TOUCHING ME_ " " _STOP TOUCHING ME_ " " _STOP TOUCHING ME_ " " _STOP TOUCHING ME_ " " _STOP TOUCHING ME_ "

" _STOP TOUCHING ME_ " " _STOP TOUCHING ME_ " " _STOP TOUCHING ME_ " " _STOP TOUCHING ME_ " " _STOP TOUCHING ME_ " " _STOP TOUCHING ME_ "

Undyne winced against the sound as it resonated through her head, trying to figure out just what or who had attacked her. For a single surreal moment she thought it might be  _herself_ , or at least the thing she vaguely remembered being, but how could that be right?

Taking advantage of her hesitation, the other monster pulled its arm out of her grasp and dissolved into the stone floor like water into dry dirt.

She heard a splash and got back up, summoning an energy spear and raising it as she turned to face the pond. There was a dull ache in her head as she called on her magic, but she hardly even noticed now, breathing hard from the sudden exertion.

The gray monster poked its head back out of the water and hissed, twitching and shivering as if in disgust. Now that she had a better look, she could see that this wasn't a copy of herself, not at all. The body shape definitely reminded her of _someone_ , but its face resembled no monster that Undyne had ever seen; it had no eyes, no facial features at all save for a set of oversized black fangs.

"You wanna... try that... again?!" Undyne said. She probably wouldn't throw the spear, not unless the thing tried again to attack her again. She kind of hoped that it would.

It didn't.

Undyne lowered her spear, the adrenaline rush from the sudden attack already fading. The weapon felt heavy. Her arms felt heavy. She stared and stared at the monster floating in the pond, trying to make sense of what she was looking and and failing. Maybe,  _maybe_ she'd seen a monster like this before, but somewhere so different from this place that she couldn't remember anymore. She'd had it just a minute ago.

The gray monster sank further into the water, burbling irritably at her.

"What... _are_ you?" she asked. While it had been attacking her just a minute ago, the monster turned away and fully submerged, single arm tucked in against its side.

Undyne followed the other monster as far as the edge of the water, but it had already vanished with hardly a ripple along the surface.

She became distantly aware that she'd scraped her knees against the stone floor. They stung a little. Not really. In fact, the slight pain vanished almost as soon as she thought about it.

Undyne closed her eye and rubbed her temple with her fingers, leaning against her spear like a crutch. She didn't know what was happening anymore. Going back home was supposed to fix it, but it didn't. Maybe going back to her home on the surface would have helped, but she couldn't remember how to get there. Alphys hadn't said anything about it, even when Undyne said she wanted to go there. So maybe it was just a dream.

The other presence wasn't laughing or begging anymore.

And from the looks of things, the gray monster wasn't coming back. Maybe it had just been another dream, never real at all. She didn't know. She didn't really care anymore.

Digging through her memory, Undyne left the side of the pond and followed the sound of rushing water, down another tunnel not far from the house. She walked until she reached the water's edge, then let the spear slip from her hand and roll across the ground before vanishing.

At the edge of the waterway, a little yellow bird cocked its head in curiosity and chirped.  Almost surprising, that it hadn't been frightened away by all the noise. But then, the little bird had always been pretty tough, pretty determined, as far as birds went.

Undyne smiled weakly.

"Hey. Can you do something... for me?"

Two black, beady eyes peered curiously up at her.

"I... did something really wrong. Can you find Gerson for me, a-and... get him to come here? Please."

It was the only name that came to mind, but it felt right. Alphys was too much, and too confusing, and Undyne wasn't exactly sure what had happened to everybody else. Much less herself. But he could help fix all this.

Without bothering to wait for the bird to leave, Undyne curled up on the cavern floor and closed her eye again.

* * *

ENTRY NUMBER 26:

* at this rate i don't know when i'll be able to get her out  
* she's stabilized, but only to the point of acclimating to the water.  
* but what else could i have done?  
* UGHHHHHH

* * *

Monster Kid paced around in the corner of the library, slow enough to keep from getting dizzy but fast enough to get that way if they stopped walking. Their feet moved automatically, their sight blurring all together: they walked past the wall, then the bookshelves, then there was Sis sitting in the other corner, then their parent and all the other adults all gathered around the table, then the window and the front door and then the desk again. They'd spent most of the morning and afternoon feeling all weird and sleepy, until a little while before they ran into the queen. And now they couldn't stay still.

Pretty ironic.

They were  _pretty_ sure that was what the word "ironic" meant, anyway.

 

The door to the back room creaked open as a brown rabbit-monster toddled out, pocketing zir cell phone.

"S-s-s-s-so... Queen Alphys still isn't answering?" ze announced to the room. "I l-l-left another message, but..."

Their parent hissed under their breath. On the other side of the table, the mouse-monster shot the purple-furred shopkeeper bunny an  _I-told-you-so_ look from over their scarf, and by the time Monster Kid completed another circle and saw them again, the shopkeeper rabbit had her arms folded and the brown rabbit was sitting again. Sis sat in the corner, typing so quickly that Monster Kid could hear her claws tapping away at the screen. And then they looped around and saw the window and the front door and the desk.

The one thing they tried not to look at was the neatly-folded shirt and pair of shorts that sat on the center of the table. The clothes weren't dripping with blood or covered in dust or anything really scary like that, but the shirt had been torn almost in half across the front, and that was enough to make Monster Kid feel like they'd barf.

"If she was going to respond, she would have by now," their parent said.

"You don't know that," the shopkeeper rabbit said. "There's plenty 'a reasons why she might not answer just now. Could be part of the joke, couldn't it?"

Monster Kid walked faster.

"Not to be pessimistic, but. What if it's the opposite? Whatever got to him could have..." the mouse-monster trailed off, or maybe their next few words were just impossible to hear through their scarf. The orange puppet-monster giggled convulsively.

"That's just what I mean! How can you be so sure that anything 'got to' anybody when we don't so much as know—"

"S-S-Sanshy caaan't be _dead!_ " the other rabbit-monster wailed, with zir face squished against the table by the sound of things. "I schaw before, and he whush  _fine..._ "

(There was the wall again and then the book shelves and then sis and the grown-ups and the window and the front desk and the wall and the book shelves, Monster Kid was getting a little dizzy after all...)

"Alphys hasn't posted on Undernet for a really long time," Sis added in, giving her phone a wave.

"Thank you." Their parent nodded, polishing the lens of their glasses with the front of their sweater. Normally they might have been happy to have all these monsters in the library, but nobody was doing any reading now. "Is there anyone in Waterfall that we can contact? Even if there hasn't been an official warning, it seems like the least we can do."

The shopkeeper bunny sighed. "I just don't want to think it might be true, but... you're right. My sister's staying there, and her little one. I'd better tell them to keep an eye out for anything... off."

After she left the table, their parent and the mouse-monster started talking urgently back and forth, their voices low. Monster Kid walked faster and tried to tune them out, but it just felt like their brain was going in circles too.

Undyne. The human. So much blood.

If there was a human in the Underground, everyone was gonna die this time, not just Monster Kid's neighbor. Hiding in the library wouldn't save anyone. They just knew it.

Monster Kid stopped walking and wobbled in place, the world swinging all around until they really thought they might barf after all. Then they went back to their parent's side and leaned their head against them.

"I wanna go home," they complained. Their parent put their arm around Monster Kid's shoulder.

"Soon."

They stood like that for a while, feeling a little better but not really. Some time after the shopkeeper rabbit came back and reclaimed her spot at the table, the orange monster stirred, their poncho swishing around them. They hummed quietly to themselves, until Monster Kid wasn't sure if what they said after that was just more humming or not. "Look-look."

Monster Kid jolted, which startled their parent into scooping them up even before they looked to see what was outside.

The queen was walking quickly past the library, clutching a bunched-up handful of what might have been a plastic bag or something like it. Monster Kid wasn't quite sure, and they soon lost their view of it as their parent set them back down again and headed for the door.

Monster Kid and their sister looked at each other, then towards the door, then followed.

 

The orange hand-puppet monster drifted out the door after Sis, followed by the two rabbit monsters and then the mouse. Queen Alphys shrank back and shoved something into her pocket, eyes darting from one monster's face as a small crowd formed around her. 

"Oh, thank _goodness,_ " the shopkeeper rabbit said.

"What happened?!" their parent asked, drab feathers all fluffed-up like they were  _really_  upset. "We've been trying to contact you, something's happened to Sans—"

"We _think._ "

"His clothing—" the mouse-monster began.

" _W-w-w-where's Sansy?!_ "

Queen Alphys flinched as if their questions hurt her.

"I'm s-sorry, guys, I d-d-didn't mean to scare anybody. My phone is broken, so if you t-tried to call me then I didn't know," the queen stammered.

"Do you know what happened to him?" their parent asked again, more insistently. "We were afraid that it could be another human..."

"N-no! Nothing like that has happened. If it did, th-then you would have received a w-warning, don't worry..."

"Th-th-then what happened to Sansy?" the brown rabbit monster demanded. "They s-s-s-said that th-they saaaaw you here! And then his shirt was on the ground and it LOOKED like th-th-there was dust on it..."

Not even trying to act tough, Monster Kid hid behind their sister. Being outright told that the human wasn't back should have been reassuring, but the look on Queen Alphys' face had been scary before. They didn't even want to know what it might look like now.

"I didn't do a-anything!" the queen protested, sounding more frightened herself than Monster Kid expected.

"Then he’s all right, isn’t he? I’ve been tellin’ them all that there are plenty of reasons why we coulda found what we did. That skeleton lived around here for a long time, and we all know he’s got one weird sense of humor…" said the shopkeeper rabbit.

"So w-w-w-where IS he?" the other rabbit monster cut in yet again. The other rabbit waved at zir as if to say something like, _let her answer_.

"I didn’t—I didn’t do anything, he…" Alphys started, then stopped. Monster Kid couldn’t see her anymore, but her voice shook.

"Holy _crap_ ," Sis breathed.

"What? What is it??" Monster Kid demanded, trying to keep quiet as well, but Sis just whispered at them to _freaking shut up for a minute_ and gave them a shove. Monster Kid pushed her back with her shoulder, before the mouse-monster shushed them both. Starting to get impatient, Monster Kid risked another peek from behind Sis' back.

Alphys shivered and squeezed her hands together, then slipped them behind her back as if she was trying to hide something again. Except that they were empty. "S-Sans is, um."

She swallowed hard. "I still don’t… know exactly w-what happened and I’m, I’m still working on figuring that out, but… w-well, did Sans ever t-tell any of you about his HP being s-super low?"

There was total silence, save for the snow crunching as monsters moved slightly.

"No..?" said the mouse-monster. Monster Kid's sister made a funny noise, like a choked-off laugh.

"I don’t believe I’ve ever checked…" said the shopkeeper rabbit.

Queen Alphys nodded, as if she’d been expecting this answer. "Well, it is. It w-was. There was an accident, I think, and he… died."

Oh.

So he really was dead, then.

Monster Kid let this new information enter into their mind, distantly waiting to see their own reaction. But it wasn't new, really, and he wasn’t the first person from Snowdin to die since the human left. 

"Didja see it happen?" Sis suddenly called out in her high, chirpy voice, earning a sharp look from her parent that she totally ignored.

The queen backed off further from the group. "No. As I s-said, I still don’t quite know what happened, but… of-of course I’ll tell all of you once I do, but until then, p-please… please don’t tell anybody else. I don’t w-want them to be afraid when there’s no reason for it."

"But you said you don't _know_ ," Sis said.

"I know that it isn't a human," the queen said. "Th-that's..."

She stopped as Monster Kid's parent grabbed their sister by the shoulder, whispering something in her ear. Alphys put a little more distance between herself and the group.

"I'm sorry. I can't t-t-tell y-you any more right now, but...  I'm sorry," she said. It seemed like there should be a hundred other questions for the grown-ups to ask, but they were all weirdly quiet as she all but ran away.

Somewhere off to their side, Monster Kid could hear somebody quietly sniffling but trying to hide it—they guessed it was the brown rabbit.

"Well. That was..." the mouse-monster began.

Sis twisted out of her parent's grip and bounced forward a few steps, spinning around to face everyone else. "She killed him, didn’t she? There’s no _way_ she didn’t, huh?"

From the sound of things, the brown rabbit in the group was flat-out crying now. The mouse monster hopped over, letting zie wipe zir face with the end of their long scarf. Monster Kid’s parent flicked their tail, arms folded, staring fixedly towards the trees across from the library as if in thought.

"Y-yo, that’s not true! I SAW her before, and... c'mon, would she do something like that?" Monster Kid protested. Normally they would take their big sister’s side just because, but she was making them feel anxious and barf-y again. Sis rolled her eyes.

"She’s LYING, stupid!"

"Be quiet," their parent said, speaking in a near-whisper themselves. In its own way, it made Monster Kid even more nervous than if they'd shouted. "Go back indoors."

"Why? You all KNOW I'm—"

" _Enough_."

It got uncomfortably quiet after that, as Sis and their parent stared each other down. Monster Kid squirmed.

"Hey, that stuff really ISN'T true, right?"

Nobody answered them, though the shopkeeper rabbit had a somber expression on her face.

Sis huffed and rolled her eyes, but when Monster Kid headed back to the library, she eventually followed. If only because they couldn't get the door open by themselves.

"I'm _right_ , you know," she hissed, but Monster Kid just shrugged and didn't answer.

The adults all stayed outside the library, having some sort of whispered argument for what seemed like a long, long time.


	13. (STATUS UPDATE/AUTHOR'S NOTE)

As I mentioned at the end of chapter 1, this is the first reasonably substantial work of fiction I've written, much less posted anywhere. (Which is to say, I didn't write 150 words and then delete the whole thing in frustration, per usual.)

As a not-too-surprising result, there's a fairly big continuity issue midway through the story that I somehow missed up until this point, one that sort of breaks the chapters following it. My initial plan was to remove the offending scene since it's really minor in and of itself, but I soon realized that I'd still have to do some revision on the following chapters. They wouldn't necessarily be huge changes, but there'd be changes nonetheless.

More importantly, though, this specific slip-up is indicative of other problems I've been having. It's gotten harder and harder to ignore this fic's shortcomings on a basic writing level, side-effects of it being longer than originally planned, and with some underlying issues with tone/implications/general Stuff (TM) that bother me a lot. And if I'm going to have to edit a big chunk of the story anyway, then why not just go all the way and make all the changes I've been wanting to make, right?

So basically, there are three routes I can take here:

 

1.) Try to ignore the mistake and keep writing, though it'll continue bothering me,

2.) Go back and revise roughly 1/3 of a story and try to ignore the other nagging issues I have, or

3.) Hit the RESET button.

 

I'm very, very tempted to just start over and post a new version of Triage. No story is perfect, but it would at least be better-written, streamlined, and just _better_ overall. At the same time, I don't want to leave people feeling like I ditched the story or will do so in the near-future, as is often the case when people go on hiatus or do a reboot or what-have-you. I love this story and at this point it means too much to me to  _not_ finish, but it's so easy to just  _say_ that, you know?

So... that's basically where we are right now. I haven't really decided what to do yet, but I feel like anyone who's read this far at least deserves a status update. Especially in light of the loooong gaps of time between the most recent chapters, which I'm sorry about. I know it's "just" a goofy random fanfiction, but I care about all this stuff and really don't like leaving people hanging.


	14. [RESET]

AUTHOR NOTE: Per my previous "chapter", I decided that I really just need to start this story over from the beginning. In retrospect, I think I've been at a weird midpoint of trying to do too much at once, while also stretching things out way more than they needed to be, so I'll be fixing that along with a few other things ~~including the rather cruel fate of a particular character~~  so I can keep going where I wanted with this. But we'll get there when we get there.

So, uh, go on ahead to my author page and read the new version instead. Or don't, I'm not the fanfic police. I'll be leaving this version up because I don't want to lose all the lovely comments people have left, and because it'll probably be a nice reminder of my growth as a writer a few years down the line, but it's not getting updated further.


End file.
